


behind the stars

by sassymajesty



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Past Finn Collins/Clarke Griffin, mentions of past physical and verbal abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-06-27 23:37:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 67,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15695694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassymajesty/pseuds/sassymajesty
Summary: By the time she runs out of songs to listen to and the interviews start with Clarke charming the entire audience with a mere wave, Lexa is curled up under the blankets, her hands tucked under her pillows as Clarke chatters on about a new upcoming song she’ll release in the following weeks. She sings a stripped version of it and Lexa realizes she’s listened to it before - it’s an old interview, apparently - and hums along without really meaning to.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's all written out already, so the updates for this story will be a lot more regular than the ones in my other stories. I'm hoping a chapter every Wednesday, save when life gets in the way!
> 
> A fair warning. In this story, Clarke has just gotten out of an abusive relationship and while nothing is much too descriptive, there are a few mentions of physical and verbal abuse throughout the story. I'll give a heads up in the notes at the beginning of the chapters where it's mentioned in more details, so keep an eye on that. And Finn is the bad guy in this story, a really nasty guy. I thought I'd let y'all know beforehand, in case this isn't your cup of tea!

The Jeep groans and Lexa groans with it as she jolts from side to side in the old car when she doesn’t steer clear of a pothole fast enough. She makes a mental note to get the road fixed, already going through her contacts in her head to find someone who’s do a good job without charging her an arm.

Having nearly dug that path herself after so many comings and goings, Lexa barely pays any attention to the last rays of sun shining through the forest siding the main road before it set completely, the warm glow that comes with late fall making everything seem that much ethereal. She  _ knows  _ it’s a breathtaking sight and she makes her living from people willing to spend a few hundred bucks for the chance of watching it all in person.

But she’s nothing if not a practical person and she needs to be home before dark, enjoying the sunset like a love sick teenager in a period drama will have to wait another day.

Lexa blames the heavy rain they had a couple of weeks ago for how decadent this damn road is each time she lurches forward, the flimsy seat belt of her decades old Jeep doing nothing for safety. She still loves this car as much as she did when her father pressed the keys to her palm and wished her good luck, and it has endured through thick and thin with her but it wouldn’t last much more if it collapsed in the middle of the road. Maybe she  _ should  _ give up an arm to pay the right guys to destroy the idea of a whimsical gravel road and actually get it properly paved.

Before she could start going over her budget and considering what a construction work of this level would do for business, Lexa sees the place she calls home coming into view. As the gravel road takes a sharp turn, Lexa slows down until the car starts complaining so she can take in how majestic her hotel looks in the orange glow that only a sunset in the country can give.  _ Her hotel _ \- she’s been running it for the better part of four years, but those two little words still make her chest puff with pride.

She takes in the leaf covered walls that made her fall in love with this place, the dark wooden details popping out against the cool white of the walls that still remind her of Dutch buildings for some reason, the lush greenery that somehow never give up on flourishing, no matter the weather. She lets her mind wander to what lays beyond that, the second building and the garden in between the two, the patio with a view of the mountains and the fields where the horses must be coming back from at this time. 

Lexa can’t imagine anywhere else being  _ home _ .

Parking near a path with bushes that match almost exactly the green of her Jeep, Lexa hops out, dragging a few packages out with her and shutting the door with the heel of her foot. She doesn’t bother setting up the alarm or even closing the windows all the way up - there’s nothing to worry about this far into the countryside, nothing will ever come bother her in her own little piece of heaven.

Lexa crosses the path to the entryway, squinting to make out the words on the board for tonight’s specials before she even reached the front desk. It only takes her reading the words "porcini broth" next to "kale risotto" to realize she’s starving. It’s early enough that most of the handful of guests haven’t made their way to the dining area yet but she’s sure that it’s late enough for her to find something delicious to steal from the kitchen.

Her mind is still on her dinner and what she could grab from the wine cellar to pair nicely with the risotto when she drops the packages on top of the front desk, causing a sleepy Anya to jump on her chair, lifting her head from where it was resting on the lowered side of the desk, a post-it dangling from her cheek before gravity got it unstuck.

“Would you look alive, please?” Lexa smirks at Anya’s wide eyes, leaving the woman to stretch as she looks through what she had gotten in the mail. It feels old-timey, having to drive several miles once a week to find out what bill had arrived or order had been delivered. But it’s one of the things Lexa likes the most about living this far into the country - she could order her entire life online, but she still had to live through an anticipation that never lacked in novelty.

“You tell this hotel to look alive,” the remark comes out with a yawn, mumbled words sounding more like a child complaining than a grown woman caught napping at work. Anya cracks her neck and fingers, sending a chill down Lexa’s spine, before she finally settles her chin on her closed fist, looking bored at her boss, “I haven’t seen a soul in four hours, I can only play so many games on my phone.”

“We are heading into the off-season, so you better get used to it,” Lexa answers readily as she sorts through the packages - the new books for the reading nook had arrived and she has half a mind to leave it for Anya to read. After people coming in and out all day for a solid seven months, it can be hard to adjust to the lull that mid November brings. “Have you talked to the staff about their vacations?”

“Yeah, I have the list of people going out and the new schedule somewhere. I’ll look for it when I’m awake. What you got there?” Anya must have been  _ really _ bored if she actually managed to get the paperwork ready without Lexa nagging about it.

“The books I ordered, this week’s magazines, the new pressure cooker Octavia asked for,” Lexa points at each item as she lists them, knowing Anya stopped listening to her once she got her hands in the magazines. She should drop by the kitchen to hand Octavia her new toy and get dinner, but something catches her attention - there, hidden under the magazines Anya was flipping through now, Lexa found an envelope with a law firm name printed neatly under her name.

She fishes it out, vaguely registering the fancy sounding last names that make up the firm and where it had come from, and rips it open. Lexa lets her eyes skim the first page, picking up sentences here and there until she wills herself to go back and actually read it through. Between words she left behind when she graduated from business school - hereinafter, whereas, irreparable harm, counterparts and right, arbitration - and names she doesn’t recognize, Lexa realizes someone had sent her a non-disclosure agreement. They urged her to send the signed document to the return address until - Lexa checks the calendar on the wall beside Anya - two days from now so it could be notarized in time for a Clarke Griffin to be staying in her hotel in the “aforementioned date of reservation”.

“Who the fuck is Clarke Griffin?” Lexa mutters under her breath, searching her memory for any celebrity she knows by that name or anything similar and any possibly famous guests they’d be hosting in the next few weeks. Wasn’t there an engineering firm that had Griffin in the name? And why would a big-shot engineer need her to assure her staff wouldn’t go babbling about his visit to her hotel?

“What about her?” Anya asks, looking much more awake, at the same time Lexa is about to check their reservations for any conferences in the upcoming weeks, even if she knew by heart that these conferences usually took place in the beginning of the year. Lexa’s confused “ _ huh? _ ” is more about the pronoun Anya uses than anything else, but the woman repeats herself, “You asked about Clarke Griffin. What about her you wanna know?” Anya sets the newest issue of a magazine about motorcycles aside and perches up - that’s when Lexa realizes it’s probably not an engineer the NDA is talking about, most likely not even a guy, “Are you suddenly becoming  _ cool _ ? Because I’m not ready to handle that.”

Lexa hands Anya the few pages stapled together for her to study, trying to keep her confusion from showing too much. Anya already thinks she’s as uncool as a white dad dancing funk. “Apparently, we’re hosting her for a few weeks and her lawyers want to make sure no one knows about it.”

“Yeah, like  _ we  _ could keep Clarke fucking Griffin off the radar,” Anya scoffs and Lexa feels like there’s some joke she isn’t in on, but before she can ask anything, Anya scrambles for their booking files, talking almost too fast for Lexa to understand as she clicks her way through the computer, “When is she staying here? And for how long? Oh my  _ god _ , Raven is gonna  _ freak _ . Are we allowed to ask for pictures? And how long does that agreement goes on for, I need to tell the world I met Clarke Griffin,” Lexa can swear Anya honest to god  _ squeals _ , but she forces herself to believe it’s all in her mind because Anya Forest does not  _ squeal _ . “Oh, fuck, she’s coming in less than a week from now. You’re gonna have to overnight that doc-”

“Who  _ is _ she?” Lexa snaps, cutting Anya’s fangirling short - it’s nearly scary to see the utter joy in her usually way too serious face, her high cheeks flustered with excitement. Lexa needs to know who she’ll be hosting and to what lengths she’ll have to go to make sure her entire staff keep their mouths shut about it.

“God, I forget you’ve been living under a rock with no connection to the human world,” Anya means it as an offense, but Lexa can’t take it when she can literally hear crickets in the trees outside. She watches impatiently as Anya taps something on her phone and scrolls down until she finds a picture she deems good enough and turns the screen for Lexa to see, “ _ That _ is Clarke Griffin.”

Lexa resists the urge to grab the phone to look at the picture up close - Anya and half the staff already have too much ammo when it comes to Lexa’s “mom habits”. The blurred background makes it clear it’s a professional photography and Lexa can barely make out the stage and a keyboard on it before focusing on the main subject: a blonde singing softly into an old school microphone. 

With her black ripped jeans, a crop top that had more lace than actual fabric and a bomber jacket on top of it, the woman hardly seemed like the type of person who would spend her days in a countryside hotel. She belongs in beaches with white sand and transparent water sipping on colorful drinks - not in a hotel in Middle of Nowhere, Colorado.

“Wait, does she have her pink tips in here?” Anya asks as she snatches her phone back to check what picture she was showing, “Yeah, nice. She’s like that now. She had it all in that faded grey you hate a while ago, then a really bright purple-"

“Anya,” Lexa exhales in frustration, closing her eyes for a moment as the other woman stops talking, “I still don’t see why is she such a celebrity and why she needs a non disclosure agreement from us.”

“Ugh, grandma,” Anya grunts and rolls her eyes, typing something on her phone as she explains, “Clarke is a big deal, okay? She’s  _ the _ up and coming musician right now. Tickets for her concerts sell out in a flat minute, she’s been to every talk show that matters, literally everyone wants an interview with her - apparently, she’s hilarious. We should watch some interviews,” Lexa can make out how Anya exits the browser where she’s been saving pictures to her phone and opens up YouTube and types ‘Clarke Griffin interview’ in the search bar, “She’s been number one on Billboard and iTunes for the last three months. Without any new song coming out in this time.  _ That _ ’s the level of celebrity we’re talking about.”

Lexa rocks on the balls of her feet, picking up the non-disclosure agreement again. Even if they’re in the off-season and there are barely more than a handful of guests in the hotel, it’ll be a difficult mission to keep it all under covers. “If this Clarke really is all you’re painting her to be, why would she run away and hide?”

Anya lights up in a twisted way that makes Lexa wonder if she should give Anya her vacation for whatever period of time Clarke stayed in the hotel. “She just went through the break up of the  _ decade _ . Seriously, some people say it’s in the same level as Brangelina.” 

Lexa refrains from asking what exactly is a Brangelina as Anya turns the phone back to her so she can read the title of a news article - “Why did Clarke Griffin and Finn Collins split? From out of control jealousy to domestic violence allegations” - followed by a picture of the couple in an event of some kind, Clarke with her hair in the faded grey Anya mentioned and the man with his long hair parted sideways and styled with way too much hair product. 

“I don’t feel comfortable stalking our guests,” Lexa says, drawing back from the phone when Anya waves it at her to pick it up and read through the article. If feels a lot like invading her future guest’s privacy for comfort, even is she is a famous musician whose live is always out in the open.

“It’s not stalking if it’s public information,” Anya shrugs and goes back to reading the article, browsing through it as if she’s just learning all those facts, although Lexa would suggest she knows it by heart now, “Besides, don’t you want to know why you need a confidentiality agreement? You should know what you’re getting yourself into.”

As if on cue to give her an excuse, her stomach grumbles and her mind can only imagine a godsent risotto with a gigantic wine glass to wash it down, images of a certain blonde with pink tips forgotten for the moment. “What I really want right now is food. Do you think Octavia will feed me?”

Anya snorts at her whiny tone and puts down her phone for the moment, even if Lexa knows she’ll hear more about Clarke before she arrives. Nudging the huge package in front of her towards Lexa, Anya smiles, “Give her her fancy ass pressure cook and she’ll feed you like a grandma feeds her always starving grandchildren.”

Her night goes as many other have gone before. She eats in the kitchen before the dinner rush makes it impossible to be near it, listening to Octavia raving about the new pressure cooker as if it’s be single greatest kitchen appliance she’s ever laid eyes on. Between sips of wine and mindless conversation, Lexa lets Clarke fall to the back of her mind, focusing on listing everything she had to get done for the evening before curling up in bed with one of the books she had gotten in the mail.

She spends the next handful of hours pouring over budgets - damn her and her stupid decision to do all the accounting books on her own - and trying to figure out a more flexible schedule for the next few months when she’d be somewhat short staffed.

By the time she drops by the front desk to get a book and make sure no one needs her, Anya has finished her shift and Aiden stood ramrod straight behind the desk, proud to be left alone for the night shift after all the times he had to put up with a sleep deprived Anya. She smiles at him and bids him goodnight, picking up a book from the pile she left on the desk - because Anya couldn’t have been bothered to put it away - before making her way to her room. 

She goes through the motions of showering, putting on pajamas, brushing her teeth, braiding her hair and picking up her newest book before something makes her drop it on the bed and walk to her desk. Lexa sighs at her own curiosity, knowing she won’t be able to fall asleep before she gives into it, and grabs her laptop, bringing it to bed with her.

As her fingers brush the keyboard and enter “Clarke Griffin” on her browser, Lexa can’t help but wish she had brought some wine with her, if only to make it easier on her consciousness that she’s actively stalking a guest - no matter what Anya says, she wouldn’t Google any other guest. She skims through the articles about the break up, mostly trying to find something  _ else _ than absorbing any information, and reads the about section on her website instead of Wikipedia - at least that way she’d be reading only what Clarke wanted everyone to know.

Before she makes an intentional decision to look for her music or even realizes that she’s going to YouTube at all, Lexa lets the first chords of Clarke Griffin’s latest hit fill her room. The music video tells a story she can’t really care about, not when close ups of bright blue eyes is everything she can see.

Lexa lets autoplay do its job, giving her music video after music video until she’s seen everything in Clarke’s channel, including acoustic versions of songs she’s already listened to. It doesn’t take much for Lexa to decide she likes Clarke best when it’s just her and a guitar, her eyes closed as she makes it through the chords without any effort. 

By the time she runs out of songs to listen to and the interviews start with Clarke charming the entire audience with a mere wave, Lexa is curled up under the blankets, her hands tucked under her pillows as Clarke chatters on about a new upcoming song she’ll release in the following weeks. She sings a stripped version of it and Lexa realizes she’s listened to it before - it’s an old interview, apparently - and hums along without really meaning to.

If she falls asleep listening to Clarke laughing as she plays some game in a talk show, Lexa rests quietly in the knowledge Anya will never find out about it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a short and sort of vague description of how abusive Clarke and Finn's relationship was, around the halfway mark. Most mentions will be something like this, but I'll put the warnings nonetheless. I added some new tags to reflect the content, and will be adding more as needed.
> 
> And thank you all so much for the feedback!! I adored reading your first impressions and I hope this chapter lives up to it :')

****The hotel itself isn’t bad. It’s not what she’s used to, but it’s not _bad_. It has a grandma house feeling to it that Clarke can’t seem to shake, with its early twentieth century decor that leaves it almost smelling like canned soup and black and white daytime television.

She’s used to grand hotels with balconies big enough for her to completely forget she even has an actual room to go back to, overlooking an infinity pool where she’d spend her days drinking away her troubles with a never ending list of complex drinks that she wouldn’t be able to pronounce halfway through her drunken stupor. She’s used to sleek dark furniture against off-white walls and modern art adorning them, to mirrors reflecting the ocean and bathtubs big enough for four of her to soak in.

Instead, she gets a passable view of the stables from her bay windows that don’t open and a couple of grandpa chairs to sit with a book in the late afternoons to watch the sun setting over the mountains in the distance.

 _It’s not bad_ , Clarke repeats to herself for what feels like the thousandth time that day. Sitting at the vanity that overlooks the entire room, Clarke takes in the unmade full bed, with its white linen sheets and wooden bed posts, the bedside tables with matching lamps giving off a Victorian vibe.

Her phone resting on the vanity beside her bluetooth over-ear headphones, her guitar settled against the window seat and her leather jacket thrown on the bed don’t seem to belong in the same room as the the striped curtains, the patterned rug at the foot of the bed and the twin chairs sitting against the windows.

It’s like she’s intruding, bringing chaos to a place that has never known anything but peace.

As if on cue to save her for another solid hour of self loathing, her phone buzzes with an incoming call. “Hey, Bel. Tell me I can go where the people are,” Clarke says in lieu of pleasantries, only barely refraining herself from singing to The Little Mermaid’s Part of Your World tune. They never really needed the whole ‘hi, how are you, how have you been, what’s the weather there’ nonsense and Clarke is pretty sure that’s most of the reason she hired Bellamy Blake as her manager.

Well, _that_ and his tough love whenever it came to keeping her public image from falling apart.

“Not until this whole thing dies down and you know it,” his low, serious voice is enough for a clear image of his frowning to form in her mind - they’ve been through this before. “I’m just trying to keep you alive, Clarke.” She walks to the windows, the morning light shining bright on the fields below her. She sees a few horses wandering freely in search of a warm place to eat their grass, no saddle and no rope tying them anywhere. Clarke envies them, even if she _knows_ Bellamy has a point. “Besides, it’s been four days. You can’t possibly be missing the city life already.”

“Oh, I _am_. Believe me. I wasn’t made for living in the country, two nights sleeping with crickets sounds that don’t come from my phone is one night too much,” Clarke whines and can’t hold a grunt in when she hears a low chuckling from the other side of the line, “There’s nothing to do here, no place to go besides nature and I’ve done enough bonding with horses to last me a lifetime.”

“You rode a horse?” his chuckling morphs into full blown laughter and Clarke wants to tell him to fuck off, but finds herself smiling fondly at the sound. Of all the things she left behind, she never thought she’d miss Blake making fun of her.

“I got near one,” she shrugs even if he can’t see her, cringing at the memory alone. Raven had gotten her the nicest horse, the one she had seen a little boy feed carrots to the day before, and Clarke had managed to spook it with a single touch.

His laughter dies down when he speaks again, “Okay, I know you’re not the biggest fan of nature, but you don’t need to spend your days in the mossy forests nearby. Even though you _should_ , they are spectacular and watching the sunset through the trees is breathtaking.” Clarke lets her eyes wander towards the forest Bellamy is talking about and has showed her more pictures of than she cares about. Being this caught up in her own shit is easy to forget he comes here whenever he has the chance. “They have amazing gardens there, you can spend each day of the week in a different spot, working on your music-”

“Don’t you think I tried that? I mean, not the gardens, but-” she sighs heavily and pushes away from the window, only enough to let herself drop heavily on the bed, the mattress squeaking beneath her back, “Everything I write is shit.”

Clarke doesn’t mean to sound as pitiful as she does, but she doesn’t bother explaining it to Bellamy. He has dealt with more than his fair share of her creative ruts to know nothing he’ll say can possibly make it better, that only time will force her out of it. But what frustrates her the most is that fights and breakups have always fueled her writing, the song composing itself as she lets her feelings flow from her heart to her fingertips. Not this time - she feels constricted, as if her skin is too tight to hold all of her, as if she might burst if she tries as much as peeking inside.

Finn really did a number on her.

“Read then. You keep saying you can’t find time to read, you certainly have time now.” Clarke peels herself from her bed, turning her head away from her guitar as if the inanimate object could judge her for deciding not to touch it today, “I know Lexa keeps a pretty diverse library in a reading nook near the front desk, I’m sure you’ll find something in there.”

“Fine. I’m going there now,” Clarke’s voice is nearly resentful as she takes a look at herself in the mirror. If the bags under her eyes and her greasy hair in a knot on top of her head aren’t dead giveaways of how much of a mess she is right now, the sweatpants and oversized shirt really makes it come to life. “You mentioned Lexa. She’s… _weird_.”

“Weird how?” Bellamy asks in a muffled voice and Clarke can just imagine him shoving pancakes in his mouth. It’s early afternoon, so it’s probably breakfast time for him.

She frowns as she hooks her headphones around her neck, trying to put into words what she feels whenever the woman looks at her, “I don’t know. She stares a lot. Like a smoldering glare but more threatening. I don’t know how to explain, she’s just- she’s intense.”

Clarke had arrived in the hotel in what she’d barely call a cab, dragging her luggage and a heartache behind her, when she met Lexa for the first time. The hotel owner had personally checked her in and showed her to her room, making sure everything was to her liking and letting her know the staff would be a call away if she needed everything.

She certainly didn’t seem like the military type that Octavia had so often described her as, but she didn’t exactly match the description Bellamy had given her either. She fell somewhere in the middle, keeping her distance and a straight back at the same time trying to get close, hiding something underneath her skin and trying to let it out.

Which resulted in annoyingly staring at Clarke whenever she found the energy to venture outside.

“Maybe she’s into you,” Bellamy mumbled jokingly, clearly much more interested in his food than in talking with her. Clarke grabs her keys and locks the door behind her, almost tripping over her own feet at the mere thought. “You know that the best way to get over someone is get under another someone, so there’s your chance.”

“I’m hanging up now.” Clarke scoffs loud enough for him to hear her, rolling her eyes as she disconnects the call. She tries as best as she can to push it to the back of her head and makes her way down the stairs, pulling her headphones over her ears and browsing her phone for music or something as pathetic as city sounds. She couldn’t deal with the real life birds singing outside.

As she makes her way to the little library in the far end of the hotel, Clarke lets herself muse over what Bellamy said. It this had been any other breakup, a pretty girl giving her intense stares from afar would bring her back to the game almost instantly. She would have sauntered over to Lexa, leaned against a wall and kissed her before they exchanged ten words. She would have had her fun and forgotten about whatever heartache remained. She would certainly have a much more exciting stay in this place forgotten in time.

But it hadn’t been like any other breakup. It hadn’t been two lovers parting ways amicably and it hadn’t been a two lovers having a screaming match before deciding to split up. It had been bruised ribs and bloodied knuckles, manic eyes and sleepless nights, erratic moods and fake smiles. It had stretched over _months_ , it had left her exhausted and empty and broken.

She barely has the energy to shower everyday, let alone put in the effort to get someone to sleep with her.

Clarke gets to the library with a ten hour video titled “New York traffic sounds” playing over her instrumental playlist and she can almost smell the fumes and pretzel street carts. She had taken a brief look on the volumes in the ceiling-to-floor shelves in her first day here, but didn’t really take notice of anything she wanted to read in particular. She browses aimlessly for a good while, picking up a title that sparks her interest and reading the short description on the inside flap of the dust jacket before putting it back on the shelf only to do the same a few books down the shelf.

She hasn’t read in ages. She used to love staying inside and reading all summer long when she was little, but that part of herself stayed forgotten in a shelf with her unread books when boys and booze found their way in her life.

A dull thud behind her takes her out of her reverie, making her jump slightly as she turns around to see what it is, pulling her headphones down to her neck. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you,” Lexa says with an apologetic tone, her hand hovering above the culprit - a steaming mug of what Clarke assumes must be coffee.

Clarke takes a second to bring her heart beating to a more reasonable pace, tapping at her phone to pause her music and ambient sounds. Then she turns fully to Lexa, eyeing the girl up and down. “You stalking me?” she raises an eyebrow with her question and mentally curses Bellamy for putting a less than pure mental image in her mind.

Lexa sets a book beside her mug on a side table near the fireplace and hooks her thumbs on the loops of her jeans, leaning back as she takes Clarke in as well. “Well, you’re staying in _my_ hotel, so no, I’m not.”

“You have a way to… lurk whenever I’m around,” Clarke says and almost immediately regrets it, busying herself with putting a book back in place before turning to Lexa again, “Are you making sure I won’t have a mental breakdown after everything you read about me?”

Clarke feels oddly underdressed looking at Lexa’s braided hair and a button down shirt with its sleeves neatly rolled up. “Who told you I read anything?”

She scoffs, having seen pity in one too many faces to fail to realize what was written all over Lexa’s face. “Please, your eyes scream ‘I know about your domestic violence incident’.”

“I haven’t read anything, your lawyers told me about it,” Lexa puts simply and whatever pity leftover in her semblant disappears completely. “To be honest, I didn’t even know who you were before that. I mean no offense, I’m just- not all into the celebrity world or anything.”

“Living the simple life, I get it,” Clarke nods, tossing her phone from hand to hand. She holds Lexa’s gaze until the fire behind her green eyes gets too much for her not to do anything about it and turns to the shelf again, “Do you have any recommendations?”

Clarke feels more than hear Lexa walking the distance between then until she’s standing right beside her, their arms almost touching, “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Anything to get me out of here.”

If Lexa notices the anguish in her voice, she lets it slide, running her index finger over the spine of a few books, reading their titles before moving on, “Okay, do you like fantasy?”

“Not particularly, no,” Clarke answers, letting her eyes roam Lexa’s figure. While Clarke stands out like a sore thumb among the nature and the hotel decor, Lexa seems to complement it with her dirty combat boots and dark eyebrows. _Damn you, Bellamy_.

“What about dystopian novels?” Lexa’s voice drifts towards Clarke, who barely catches herself in time to make sense of the words, struggling for an answer.

She searches her brain for where she heard those words before, “Uh, like Hunger Games?”

Lexa gives her a side glance paired with a amused smile, “Sure, like Hunger Games. They’re a bit overdone by now, but I have a few early ones that I enjoyed, even if they’re meant for a younger audience. Wait-” She takes a step back to take in the entire shelf before getting on her tiptoes to nudge a book from the top shelf, “Here. It’s entertaining, at least. It’ll keep your mind off anything else for a while.”

Clarke takes the book Lexa hands to her without thinking, letting the weight of it set in her palms, taking in the soft baby blue of the cover. The cover is set up in a way that the words for both the author’s name and the book’s name - _Delirium_ \- are hollowed to show the picture of a girl with her eyes closed and her lips in the faintest smile possible. She turns to the short description in the front flap and her throat grows tighter as she skims over it - love has been declared a disease and the government forces people to get “cured” from ever feeling it.

Sounds like a good deal.

She briefly takes notice that the main character thinks the same, but would ultimately find someone that makes her question her entire belief system. Isn’t it what always happens? We meet someone new and think this time will be different. Clarke sighs, and turns to Lexa before she can leave the room. “Thanks.”

To her surprise, Lexa doesn’t seem to have any intention to actually leave her alone. She picks up the book the left on the side table and flips through it, replacing a bookmark with her finger to mark the page she stopped on and staring at her mug before turning to Clarke, “Do you mind if I join? I was about to sit down to read, but I can take it to the gardens if you want to be alone.”

Clarke almost jumps at the idea of having someone sharing a space with her, “No, no. Please.” She throws her hand towards the chair Lexa is standing in front of, gesturing for her to sit down,  “I’d like the company. I know coming here is supposed to clear my mind and calm me down, but all this nature is driving me insane. No offense.”

“None taken. It takes a while to wind down from all the hectic day to day you must have in Los Angeles,” Lexa says as she makes herself comfortable on the chair, turning this way and the other before settling to crossing her legs in front of her and resting the book on her thigh.

Clarke finds herself drawn to the reading nook by the bay windows, fluffy pillows adorning the entire seating area. She slips her feet from her flip flops, half of her regretting not putting on fuzzy socks and decent slippers before leaving her room, and brings her knees to her chest as she flips to the first page, mumbling her answer, “It seems impossible. Time doesn’t pass here.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Clarke sees Lexa lowering her glasses - _fuck,_ of course she wears reading glasses - and fiddling with the dust jacket of her book before addressing Clarke directly, “I go to the city once a week, to get our mail and whatever other minor thing we need,” Lexa’s voice is tentative and Clarke turns her gaze to her, “I know it’s a far cry from Los Angeles, but I could give you a ride so you can spend a few hours in the civilization. It’s not much, but they do have more paved roads then we do.”

Clarke can’t quite tell if it’s the sensation of being in the middle of nowhere with someone to talk for the first time in four days or if it’s because Lexa is the first person in _weeks_ that started a conversation about something other than how much of a whore she is. If this is an olive branch, Clarke grabs it with all she has. “I’d like that, thanks.”

“If you don’t tell Octavia, I can point you to the best bakery in town. Their sponge cake is to _die_ for.” Lexa whispers, as if this secret could end the world, before slipping her glasses back up her nose and opening her book.

“My lips are sealed,” Clarke answers with a smile and begins to read.


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE**

Despite Anya’s endless teasing about it being the “most soft butch thing you could possibly do”, Lexa is pretty in love with her Jeep, have been since the morning she bought it for bargain that was much more than she had at the time.

She loves every dust covered crevice that won’t stay clean for more than a few days at a time and she loves every worrying noise it makes whenever it rains. She loves to tinkle with the motor even if she gets stinky looks from Raven when she goes to her after breaking something. She loves the freedom it gave her when she walked away from home with a duffle bag in the backseat filled with flannel shirts and dreams of a big future.

Lexa has slept in that Jeep more nights than she can count, cried in it, fought in it, kissed in it - she’s pretty proud of everything that stupid car has given her.

Yet, she’s pretty sure Clarke’s blouse alone costs more than the Jeep did when it was brand new.

After living in the countryside for years, Lexa has grown used to having her boots in a constant muddy state and dusting herself off at least fifteen times a day. It doesn’t bother her, she always has more urgent matters to deal with than the pristine state of her clothes. But she still finds herself wanting to lay out a sheet on the passenger seat - the one that creaks every time she makes a right turn - before letting Clarke climb inside.

She grits her teeth and paces away from the front desk, towards her usual parking spot, carrying her wallet and a scribbled list of requests from the city along with her keys. Her long strides come to a sudden halt when her eyes find Clarke - she’s looking away from the hotel, gazing into the gravel road that cuts through the forest, her hands folded in front of her.

Lexa takes her in - the cuffed jeans above Oxford shoes, a shirt tucked into the high waist - and almost cringes when she realizes she left the windows rolled down over night and the Jeep will be covered in dust. Dust soon to be imprinted on Clarke’s clothes.

“Ready to go?” Lexa calls out, in case the sound of her boots against the gravel didn’t give her away. It seems to have been a moot point when she sees Clarke’s shoulders jumping slightly - she had spooked her out of her deep concentration even without meaning to.

To Clarke’s credit, she only spares a brief glance at the dusty seat before climbing inside and dumping her belongings in the even dustier leg space in front of it. Lexa eyes the small handbag with wide sunglasses clipped to the side and a scarf tied to the other before turning the engine on - or rather, have it sputtering to life with a little more jolting than she’d like.

As she works the tough steering wheel and the gear shift until they’re on their way out the hotel, Lexa can’t help but notice Clarke holding the sequel to the book she recommended to her a few days ago, clutching it to her lap instead of setting it down along with her bag. It makes Lexa’s lips quirk up for a moment, to know that Clarke too holds books dear. 

Or maybe she’s just careful with other people’s belongings.

They drive silently for a while and Lexa is thankful for not having to make idle small talk. She’s good at it, she’s built an entire business around it, but she enjoys the quietness. These weekly drives to the city are one of the few moments Lexa gets to herself, to take in the unpaved road cutting through fields and forests and farms where life seems to always be quietly buzzing.

Between avoiding a pothole she really needs to find someone to fix and appreciating the crisp wind coming in through the rolled down window, Lexa almost misses Clarke pointing to the radio, “Do you mind?”

“No, go ahead,” Lexa nods towards her recently updated radio - it actually has an aux cord now instead of her old cassette player.

While Clarke fiddles with the radio, Lexa ponders for a moment what would have been her reaction to the collection of mix tapes she kept in a shoebox in the backseat. Maybe the musician in her would have been thrilled to see such an old fashioned way to listen to music. Maybe the Hollywood celebrity in her wouldn’t have touched it with a ten foot pole.

She is violently shaken out of her reverie when no other than Clarke’s own voice starts coming in through the speakers.

Lexa barely keeps the car from crashing into a fence as she scrambles to reach for the radio and pluck the CD out of its slot, pausing short of throwing the damn thing out the window. She decides to save it so she can make Anya  _ eat it _ once they get back home.

“Sorry,” Lexa mumbles in the new found silence, the roaring engine and strong wind replacing the melody that had filled the car. The tips of her ears burn and Lexa grips the steering wheel with much more force than she needs,  “Anya thought it’d be funny to t-”

“Anya?” Clarke interrupts her. Lexa ventures a quick look at her before taking a left into the paved highway, her stomach sinking at the sight of amused smile paired with a skeptically raised eyebrow.

Lexa sighs, stepping harder on the gas pedal now that the road is better, and blindly reaches for the aux cord in the glove compartment. It’s hardly a wise decision, but it’s better than to actually look at Clarke while she explains, “She made me listen to your music and she wanted me to pass as a groupie, I guess.”

“No, I understand why listening to me singing would be embarrassing for you,” Clarke says with more than just a hint of amusement in her voice and Lexa is left to wonder what exactly Clarke means by that, “But I mean, Anya? Anya jokes?”

Her lips tilt in a smirk before she can fight it, turning to Clarke, “Yeah, she doesn’t look like it, does she?”

A smile brightens up Clarke’s whole face as she leans against the armrest on the door, her blonde hair whipping back with the wind, “I’m pretty much afraid she’ll try to kill me at all times.” Lexa chuckles at the mere idea of Anya having the upper body strength to even consider murdering someone. “I think it’s her high cheekbones. There’s murder written all over them.”

Nodding once in agreement, Lexa forces herself to peel her eyes away from Clarke and back to the road. At two in the afternoon on a late fall Tuesday, the highway connecting the hotel to the nearest city is blissfully empty and Lexa could make that forty minute drive with her eyes closed any day, but it’s hardly safe to drive while staring at the gorgeous woman in the passenger seat.

Lexa can admit that to herself with no problems, although she’d have a hard time letting Anya know she finds  _ Clarke Griffin _ attractive - she should really talk to her about her, what was the word Raven used? Fangirling? And how she uses the musician’s full name at any chance she has.

It’s clear that Lexa finds Clarke beautiful - she  _ has _ been staring for a moment longer than polite every since the woman step foot in her hotel.

When she walked past the front door with her head held high like she owned the place, carrying a guitar case like it was a part of her body, Clarke set everything up for Lexa to grow a certain distaste for her. When they talked for the first time - a two minute conversation, lagoon blue eyes meeting forest green at every chance, the pink in her hair a blissful distraction from the earthy tones she’s surrounded by - Lexa knew that distaste would never grow roots.

But what she can’t fully understand is what draws her eyes to Clarke in the first place. It’s not her body - Lexa cringes inwardly as she remembers Anya very crassly reminding her that she is a “boobs woman” and Clarke’s got “the boobiest boobs” - but a  _ feeling _ .

Like she could become home.

Even now, as Lexa ventures a furtive look to watch Clarke clipping the tip of her tongue in between her teeth as she searches her phone for a song to play, it feels like they’ve known each other for longer than a week. It feels like they’ve been doing this for their entire lives. 

It might have something to do with the way Clarke carries herself, a foot propped up on the seat, arms wrapped around it as she selects something on her phone, her cheek on her knee, the sun casting a halo around her blonde hair.

It might have something to do with past lives and falling in love with someone’s soul first.

Lexa bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from chastising herself out loud. Clarke is a guest and Lexa has sturdy boundaries that she means to keep. Clarke is comfortable in her own skin and it shows, she feels like home because she’s does this whole charisma thing for a living. And Lexa needs to take Raven up on her night out offer and get laid before she starts actually mixing sexual frustration with something as juvenile as soulmates.

“So, what did you think?” Clarke says only slightly louder than the song she chose to play, but it’s enough for Lexa to almost jump out of her entire skin.

She schools her features - and her thoughts, her  _ goddamn thoughts _ that need to quiet down - and keeps her gaze straight ahead as she says in the most nonchalant tone she can muster, “About what?”

The answer doesn’t come right away. Lexa can see out of the corner of her eye that Clarke turned to stare out of her window, squinting against the bright sunlight. “My music,” her voice is shy, almost as if she’s not used to asking for feedback on her work. Then she turns fully to Lexa, chuckling as she adds, “Let me guess, it’s not what you usually listen to.”

There’s a shadow of teasing in her voice and Lexa can’t help looking at her for a moment too long, taking in the playful glint in her eyes and how the sun shines through her darkened lashes. “Well, it’s not,” Lexa admits, “But I liked it.” Lexa takes herself back to when she fell asleep listening to Clarke singing, and how the last image she saw that night was Clarke with her hair in a messy bun, her form wrapped around a loose shirt, bend over a guitar. It felt oddly personal to listen to someone sing like that and Lexa wonders if that’s where the whole familiarity feeling came from, “The acoustic versions the most. You sound true to yourself in them.”

Clarke stares at her with knitted brows and a questioning look, like Lexa is a particularly difficult math problem she doesn’t know how to figure out. Something shines in her eyes, gone too fast for Lexa to register as she turns to stare at the road ahead.

A long minute passes before Clarke shrugs whatever she was thinking and replies, “I don’t think anyone told me that I sound true to myself. Ever.” Lexa’s eyes widen slightly at the realization she might have offended Clarke, but her worries are quickly washed away when she adds, “It’s not a bad thing, it’s- unusual.”

Lexa doesn’t know how to answer to that, so she doesn’t say anything at all. Clarke busies herself with her phone again and Lexa is only barely managing to reign her thoughts in when she notices Clarke changes the song to something completely different - an acoustic playlist starts, only a guy and a guitar and the faint sound of crackling fire in the background.

Pushing down whatever threatens to leak within her, Lexa asks about the singer in a tentative voice. Clarke provides Lexa with more information than she cares for or even understand, familiar words said in a context foreign enough for her to feel almost lost, and mentions this or that musician Lexa should check out when she has the chance as they work through her playlist. 

Lexa can feel in her bones how much Clarke loves what she does, how much she believe that music alone would be powerful enough to change the world.

Their conversation flow between music that Lexa is only vaguely familiar with and a rather detailed layout of the city they’re driving to - Clarke had prompted Lexa with “ _ what do you guys do for fun around there? I mean, not that being in the middle of the forest with nature and all that shit isn’t fun, but you know? _ ” and she sounded so apologetic in the last sentence Lexa couldn’t allow herself to be upset at being essentially called boring. 

It’s easy, telling Clarke about the one bar in town that is worth going on Friday nights and listening to her singing along a song she likes. It doesn’t feel like chit chat, it feels like getting to know each other. It brings back that dangerous feeling of  _ home _ .

When Lexa parks in front of the post office, letting the Jeep die with what it always sounded like a disgruntled whine, she finds herself already looking forward to the drive back.

“I shouldn’t be long, but you don’t have to hurry,” Lexa stumbles through her words when Clarke meets her on the sidewalk, sunglasses already firmly placed on the bridge of her nose. She doesn’t quite know how to tell Clarke she freed her entire afternoon at the hotel to give her enough time to enjoy the city, “I’ll be either at the bank or one of the few offices around it, but you have my number-”

“Lexa,” Clarke chuckles out her name and it sounds like a goddamn symphony to Lexa’s ears, “I’m from Los Angeles, I’m pretty sure I can find my way around a town with one main street.”

Rolling her eyes more playfully than she intended, she scoffs, “Okay. I hope our tiny town can keep you entertained.” Lexa realizes, looking down the single street with all the worthy entertainment, that she might have oversold it a little bit. But Clarke seems ready to tackle everything that isn’t green and has no roots, even if it means a shopping spree that will last three entire stores and a pastry at the bakery a few blocks down.

“Come find me later?” Clarke asks as she takes a few steps backwards, looking at Lexa with a quirked brow, “I’ll buy you coffee and something else to make your chef pissed.”

Lexa bites back her laughter and nods right before Clarke turns around, looking almost like she belongs in between the quaint little stores and afternoon sunlight.

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for the aftermath of physical violence. It's nothing big, once again only mentioned in passing, but I put a * in the beginning of the paragraphs that talk about it if you want to skip it.

**PART FOUR**

Clarke glares at the open notebook, her scribbled over notes staring back at her almost as accusingly as the blank page beside it.

Despite Bellamy’s doubtful tone, she  _ had _ tried to write. She had followed all his tips and tricks for getting her writing juices flowing, but she couldn’t get more than a few meager verses in before realizing it was all garbage and scribbling over it, only to do the same thing again and again.

After a few hours of broken chords and annoyed grunts, Clarke had thrown her guitar on the patio table she had spent her entire afternoon and opened her laptop. Her fingers had grazed over the keyboard as she considered punching in “how to get over songwriter’s block”, but she opened Tumblr instead.

There’s little that mindlessly scrolling down neon colored pictures and cat gifs won’t numb out of her.

She closes her notebook and slumps over the table, one hand holding her chin up as she clicked play on a singing dog video - that damn dog could hold a vibrato better than she could even dream about. 

“Productive day?” Clarke looks up to find Lexa trudging towards her, hands clasped on her back, a smirk adorning her face.

Her answer is a distraught grunt that makes Lexa chuckle.

In the ten days Clarke had been in this forgotten by civilization hotel - she counts her days like prisoners do, barely falling short of writing tally marks on her wall -, Lexa had been the only breath of life she could find.

It’s not to say she hadn’t made friends with nearly everyone in the staff. Raven had a brilliant mind and Clarke fiercely braved her dread of horses to spend some time in her company. Octavia had indulged her when she asked if she could cook something for her, only to be shunned out of her kitchen after nearly setting fire to a burger. Even Anya had grown on her, her murderous eyes softening once Clarke caught her humming one of her songs.

But Lexa makes something in her come alive.

“I can’t fucking write,” Clarke says, the expletive falling from her before she can rein herself in, “I came here to get a new album out, but I can’t write.”

“It’s hard to find inspiration in nature when you hate it,” Lexa muses and sits on the chair beside her, peeking at her screen, “Or when you’re watching animal videos.”

It’s more teasing than reproaching, Clarke can tell that much. “Like you’ve never wasted your day on Tumblr,” Clarke rolls her eyes, scrolling down a few more posts.

“Tumblr?” Lexa blinks, staring blankly at Clarke.

Her eyebrows shoot to her hairline, “You- you don’t-” She can’t quite find the words to make sense of Lexa’s confusion, “I mean, I know you live in the middle of nowhere, but come on. You have internet here.”

“I don’t have  _ any _ social media accounts, Clarke,” Lexa says with a hint of amusement, leaning in to scan the screen, “I use the internet for practical reasons only.”

Clarke stops herself short of repeating her words in a mocking voice, in true five year old fashion, and scrolls past a batch of black and white pictures.

She knows Lexa doesn’t do social media. For one, the hermit didn’t know who Clarke was - not that she considers herself a Beyoncé in the world of fame, but her little romantic scandal had been everywhere. Even the hotel’s Facebook isn’t run by its owner. Clarke had seen Anya answering messages and posting an off-season program on their page when she dropped by the library to get the third book in the series Lexa had recommended to her.

A picture catches her attention and Clarke adds it to her side blog. The royal blue and hot pink tones will fit right into the theme she has going on on  _ skyprincess _ . Her main one -  _ clarkegriffinofficial _ \- is reserved for announcements and fan questions only, and she’s currently very much forbidden to post anything in any social media with her name on it.

But she still needs the distraction, so an anonymous aesthetic blog it is.

Lexa watches her for a moment, which Clarke pretends not to notice, before looking back at the screen, pointing at the little envelope at the top with a speech bubble on top of it that reads  _ 672 _ . “Someone is famous,” Lexa says and Clarke turns fully to her, so she knows for sure Lexa won’t miss her raised eyebrows and skeptical glare, a ‘ _ really?’ _ almost leaving her lips. “You know what I mean.”

Clarke does, but it’s still amusing how little clue Lexa has about her world.

“I’m banned from checking them,” Clarke says, adding a picture of two girls kissing in a lake to her blog. She can feel Lexa looking at her, her skin warming up under her gaze, but she doesn’t meet her eyes. “I’ve learned my lesson from Twitter, I can skim through the hate some other time.”

“People are sending you hateful messages?” Lexa asks, her tone with more bite than Clarke expected. She nods, closing her laptop and leaning back on her chair. “ _ Why _ ?”

“Because I’m the bitch trying to ruin Finn Collins with rumors,” Clarke can’t keep the bitterness trickling to her tone. She has been called by such colorful names that bitch sounds almost like something positive, but that’s the gist of it. Her eyes search the garden for something to focus on, anything but the green eyes beside her. 

Lexa isn’t a part of that life and Clarke doesn’t want to taint her with it.

When Lexa speaks again, Clarke hears a matching resentment in her voice, “He was the aggressor. Why aren’t people hating on him?”

Clarke sighs. In the month since their relationship went to hell and took her with it, she has asked herself that same question more times than she could count. Each time, the question left her frustrated and hollow. 

* “He’s a white man in Hollywood, he’s untouchable.” The truth in her words don’t make them easier on her skin. Finn has already landed a new job - a movie where he’s the good guy and doesn’t break his girlfriend’s ribs. Clarke turns to Lexa, hoping the despair she feels doesn’t show on her face, “I’m just a bimbo who wanted to get a ride on his fame.”

For a moment, Clarke worries Lexa will lash out on her. She grits her teeth, the muscles on her jaw giving away just how much she’s clenching them. Her eyes grow viciously cold and Clarke barely catches a glimpse of something else before she turns to look at the garden. Now it’s her turn to ignore Clarke’s gaze.

Clarke averts her eyes and crosses her arms on her chest. If Lexa were to tell her she should’ve known what she was getting into, should’ve kept it quieter, should’ve dealt with Finn better - well, it wouldn’t be the first time someone she considers a friend turns against her. 

It stings, but it isn’t news.

Watching a flock of birds crossing the pale blue sky, Clarke considers what her stay in this hotel would be like if Lexa decides she doesn’t wants to put up with her anymore. Much more boring, she realizes, even if it feels impossible.

In the past week, Clarke has mostly tried to keep busy until Lexa would find her way to her and interrupt her reading, her walking, her wandering thoughts. After their trip to the city - well,  _ town _ would be already pushing it -, they had spent a lot of time together. Some days they’d just read together, sharing space and keeping each other company. In other days, they’d talk about things so ordinary it made Clarke almost long for the anonymity and peace Lexa had, drinking tea in the patio while she learned about the hotel’s day to day and talked about her childhood.

She’d miss it, but she’d survive.

Maybe she could spend some time in Tokyo, she’s been meaning to go for a while now. Or maybe stay in a little town in Italy learning how to make pasta. Hadn’t Aziz Ansari done that and had the time of his life? 

“What’s your poison?” Lexa’s voice filters through her thoughts of sending Aziz a text to ask where he had gotten his job in Italy. Clarke blinks in confusion and Lexa rephrases her question, “If we were to go to a bar, what would you order?”

Whatever animosity Lexa had in her had dissipated, and Clarke doesn’t fight the relief that floods her. “Are we going to a bar to… get drunk?” Lexa nods and Clarke considers the question. She has different drinks for when she’s going out dancing and when her sole purpose for the night is to get so drunk she forgets her own name, “Tequila. Chase it with beer.”

Lexa nods again. “Are you free tonight?”

Her voice is so solemn that Clarke barely stifles a laugh. She’s been fighting to fill her days with anything even remotely interesting, the hours stretching long enough that Clarke wonders if time stopped altogether. She’s in the middle of nowhere, but leave it to Lexa to ask if she has any plans.

“Well, I’m a very busy woman. I’ll check my schedule and then get back to you,” Clarke says with a wide gesture, her voice mimicking Lexa’s in sobriety.

Lexa ducks her head to hide a smile and gets up, folding her hands on her back, “If you do find yourself available, I’ll be waiting at the front desk around nine.” Her tone is almost chivalrous and she nods once to bid Clarke goodbye as she walks towards the hotel.

Almost as an afterthought, Clarke half shouts after her, “I’ll wear something nice.”

.

With a last look on the mirror, Clarke tosses her hair all over one shoulder and grabs her clutch before heading for the stairs.

She’s nervous.

And telling herself the fire burning low in her stomach is merely because she’s afraid of being recognized at whatever bar they’re going to is only getting her so far.

She’s nervous because this sounds too much like a date for comfort. She’s nervous because she hopes it is.

Looking at her wristwatch, Clarke realizes she’s almost half an hour late - a knot in her throat when she thinks that Lexa has probably given up waiting for her and left. She sprints down the stairs, thankful for having brought her sensible boots instead of her go-to pumps Bellamy warned her against.

When Clarke packed half her closet and fled to a countryside hotel where she’d spend weeks holed up in a room trying not to make any noise, she didn’t exactly plan for a night out. She blames her being shamefully late on that - her room looks like a murder scene, clothes thrown over furniture and makeup lying on the floor. She’s not usually  _ that _ girl, but she may or may not have had a meltdown and whined that she had nothing to wear before deciding on tight jeans and loose tank top, throwing her leather jacket on to keep the late fall breeze from making her shiver on their way there.

Relief floods her when she finds Lexa leaning against the front desk, waiting for her. Simply waiting - not keeping busy on her phone, or chattering with whoever is on desk duty tonight, she’s just waiting for Clarke to come downstairs. 

Clarke takes Lexa in and nearly bolts back upstairs. Lexa’s face is bare, freshly washed and so clean that Clarke feels like she’s hiding under her bright red lipstick and smokey eyeshadow. Her entire rockstar-undercover-flying-long-distance outfit clashes with Lexa’s oversized sweater and boots over leggings.

Lexa looks  _ soft _ , like she’s ready to curl up by the fire with a good book and a steaming cup of tea - aren’t they going to a bar?

Shuffling towards Lexa, Clarke ignores the pounding under her ribcage - leave it to her to have a goddamn crush on the first pretty girl that gives her attention - and gestures vaguely in the space between them, “I think I’m overdressed.”

“You look beautiful,” Lexa says and Clarke nearly blushes under her heavy gaze. It certainly feels like a goddamn date so far. “Shall we go?”

“We shall,” Clarke answers in the same formal way - who uses  _ shall _ in real life? - and heads towards the door when Lexa gestures for her to go first. 

The Jeep is barely visible in its usual parking spot, the outside lights focusing mainly on keeping the entryway well lit. Clarke had had some reservations the first time she climbed into the car. It was old enough to have some noises that only came with years of hard use and there was dust everywhere, but it did its job of getting them around. Besides, Lexa talks so fondly of the damn thing Clarke could almost start to like it.

She’s halfway down the path leading to the parking lot when Lexa tugs at her sleeve to get her attention, “This way. We’re taking the truck.” If Lexa holds onto her wrist for a moment too long, Clarke can’t help her speeding heart.

Lexa leads them to the side of the hotel, an old pickup truck waiting for them under a patch of light. Clarke frowns at the faded red and muddy underside, half wondering if they’ll drive the forty minutes to the city in that, but Lexa marches towards the passenger side in large strides. She twists the handle and tugs twice to one side and once up until she gets the door unstuck, holding it open for Clarke to climb inside.

It’s a practical thing to do, there’s no way Clarke would know how to get it open, but it still feels a lot like a  chivalrous gesture.

It feels like a date.

They drive in a silence that is almost comfortable and Clarke lets herself appreciate the scenario. She might be sick of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, but she can see how beautiful the forest looks at night.

It’s only when Lexa takes a sharp right turn when she should’ve taken the left that Clarke wonders if they’re going to the city at all. “Where are we going?” Clarke asks softly, turning to see Lexa half smiling and  _ fuck _ , she looks good under the pale moonlight.

“You’ll see,” Lexa says, much a promise as it is gentle teasing. Clarke narrows her eyes and hums her answer, turning back to the road ahead of them.

It’s a full moon tonight and, with the clear sky, they barely need the headlights to find their way. Clarke watches the fields going by for a while, but then turns her attention to Lexa. Her green eyes had turned grey in the moonlight that casts new shadows on her face and for the first time, Clarke notices the sharpness of her jaw, the light freckles on the bridge of her nose, the little details that she shouldn’t be taking in at all.

She wills her traitor heart to stop from hammering against her ribcage, but there’s something delicate about being treated gently when punches and blood is all she’s known for months.

Lexa maneuvers the truck into an open gate that leads to a vast field with nothing else there besides the odd tree and Clarke doubts it’s a shortcut to the city. “I know you’ve been nice to me so far and all, but I’m getting some serious murder vibes right now.”

A stubborn grin creeps its way to Clarke’s lips when Lexa bursts into laughter, the kind of laughter that comes from deep within, the sound making her chest flutter. Lexa turns to look at her, head tilted and eyes glinting with joy, “Raven brings the horses here when there’s some work that needs to be done in the stables or well, whenever Raven feels like leaving them wild.” Lexa says, turning her attention to the bumps and holes on the ground she’s trying to cover, “There’s a lake down the hill, I thought we could park near it and watch the stars. Or just drink. I brought beer.”

_ Watch the stars _ . Clarke pretend not to notice her stomach lurching when she thinks about lying on the grass beside Lexa, watching the stars changing in the sky as the night grow old, their fingertips touching, the river flowing as the soundtrack for the night.

“Trying to get me drunk, miss Woods?” her voice is a little bit too sultry, a little bit too flirty, and she doesn’t even have the excuse of being drunk just yet. When Lexa doesn’t answer, Clarke schools her features and looks for the river as they drive downhill, “I thought we were going to a bar?”

“That was my original plan, but I thought you’d appreciate the privacy,” Lexa slows down as they get near the river and swerves the truck until the tailgate is pointing to the river.

Lexa parks and leans over Clarke to unstuck the passenger door again. If Clarke’s voice sounds a little too breathy when she speaks again, she blames it on the cold night, “Why would we need privacy?”

Pausing after opening her own door, Lexa seems to consider her answer for a moment before turning to Clarke, “People know you. It might be a tiny town but, according to Anya, you’re a pretty big deal.” Something in the way Lexa says it makes Clarke wish she wasn’t, “I wouldn’t want to wake up to headlines about Clarke Griffin getting drunk at a cheap bar in a town forgotten by civilization.” Lexa climbs out the truck and Clarke follows her, a heaviness she didn’t anticipate sitting on her chest, “Besides, we did sign a non-disclosure agreement. I’d hate to accidentally break it.”

_ Right _ . 

Clarke knows her reputation precedes her. 

She knows what’s like to wake up with hazy memories from the night before and nurse a nasty hangover while seeing her drunk ass tripping over her own feet and landing face first on a curb. She has pieced more than a few nights together working out of whatever the tabloids decided to print about her, like it’s a puzzle and they offer all the clues. There’s a reason people call her Party Girl Griffin and there’s a reason she’s lived up to that name - when you’re eighteen and famous, nothing is enough.

For some reason, she didn’t think Lexa would know that. She had hoped Lexa wouldn’t know it.

Lexa walks to the tailgate and pulls it down, climbing on the back of the truck to fumble with whatever she had packed. Clarke can make out a blanket and something, maybe a cooler with the beer, underneath it, but that’s about it. She leans against the side, waiting for Lexa to come back down, and tips her eyes to the sky.

It takes her breath away.

The night is clear, not a single cloud blocking her view, and Clarke feels small under the immensity above her. She didn’t even  _ know _ it was possible to see this many stars with the naked eye. Growing up in Chicago before moving to Los Angeles, she go used to seeing the moon and maybe five or six mildly bright stars whenever she looked up. Now it feels like she’s among them.

“Are you coming up?” Lexa says, pulling Clarke out of her reverie.

Peeling her eyes from the sky, Clarke turns to look at the back of the truck. Lexa is sitting on top of a thick blanket, leaning against the railing protecting the back window with another blanket thrown over her outstretched legs. When the soft breeze blows downhill, her loose curls fall to her face, getting in the way as she tries to work the cap off a beer bottle and the only thing Clarke can do is breathe in the sharp night air to try and keep it together.

Clarke climbs with little elegance, almost falling back before she finds her balance. If Lexa finds it amusing, she hides her smile behind her bottle. Clarke settles beside Lexa, who throws part of the blanket on her - oh,  they’re sharing it.

“You brought  _ tequila _ ?” Clarke quirks her eyebrow as she reaches for a beer, only to find shot glasses nestled around a bottle of what’s definitely not beer.

“You said you liked it,” Lexa says offhandedly, picking up the bottle and handing Clarke the shot glasses. The bottle is sealed, Clarke notices, and there’s a few too many beers for her to believe Lexa didn’t have to take a trip to the city to get it all.

She bites her lip and wills her hands to stay steady as Lexa pours the liquid into four shot glasses - good to know she’s all about saving time when drinking. “Well, I won’t deny that.”

Clarke has already downed her two shots by the time Lexa gets salt and lime wedges to help the tequila go down. Lexa’s eyebrows shoot to her hairline and Clarke can tell she’s impressed - again, she  _ did _ earn being called Party Girl Griffin by every tabloid out there. It’s good tequila and it went down smoothly, no need to waste good limes with that.

Sitting back and snuggling further into the blankets, Clarke sips her beer as she watches Lexa catching up with her. It’s amusing, to say the least. Lexa grimaces when she takes her first shot and has a coughing fit halfway through the second. It gets so bad her eyes water and Clarke has to bite her cheek to keep herself from laughing.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t go to a bar,” Clarke says when Lexa can breathe without her throat making a whistling noise, “You’d embarrass the hell out of me with your drinking skills.”

“I’m not used to tequila,” Lexa says, washing down the rest of her cough with a big gulp from her beer.

Clarke reaches for the tequila and pours on the four shot glasses lined up on the blanket, making sure two of them are less than halfway full, “You’re a wine girl, aren’t you?”

“We can go to a bar, if you want,” the answer is nor here nor there and it confuses Clarke. She gives Lexa a questioning look, her next shot halfway to her lips, “I thought drinking under the stars would maybe change your mind about how boring nature is. And if you wanted to vent, it’d be best not to have curious ears.” Clarke downs her shot to avoid meeting Lexa’s eyes. She doesn’t want to tell Lexa  _ she _ is the reason Clarke changed her mind about nature, “But we can go to a bar.”

“I think I like this better.” Clarke is surprised to realize how much she means it.

“I don’t know if you had the whole getting drunk and crying over a broken heart yet, but this night could be it.” Lexa says softly, but keeps her eyes trained on the beer bottle she’s peeling the label from. Her short nails do a poor job at it. Clarke doesn’t know Lexa all that well - not yet, anyway - but if she had to guess, she’d say Lexa doesn’t do this often, “If you want.”

* Clarke takes a long gulp from her beer. “I’ve done more than a few nights of getting drunk while I was with Finn. Mostly to forget what had happened,” her voice is smaller than she means it to be and she averts her eyes, looking up to the starry sky, searching for the brightest star. Her mind floods with treacherous memories - locking herself in the bathroom with a bottle of whiskey and a bloody nose, going to bed so drunk it didn’t hurt to breathe anymore, nursing her heartache in the corner of a badly lit bar. “My heart isn’t broken, not anymore.” Clarke blinks, breathing in deeply until she’s back in a field overlooking a rushing river, beside someone who wouldn’t lay a finger on her. “But I don’t wanna talk about that asshole. Tell me about you.”

It’s easy to smile when Lexa tucks her hair behind a red tipped ear, ducking her head to hide a stubborn grin, “What would you like to know?”

_ Everything _ , Clarke considers saying for a moment. But decides to go with, “Why a hotel?” She takes a sip from her beer and turns to Lexa, who raises her brows in question as she downs one of her shows - flawlessly this time, less tequila really did the trick. “You could’ve gone into a lot of different business, why build a hotel in the middle of nowhere?”

While Lexa tells her about growing up in a concrete jungle with each minute of her day scheduled by her lawyer parents who wanted nothing more than their child to succeed in life, Clarke leans in to get them beers. Her stomach drops a few inches when she breathes Lexa in - she smells like soap and some woody perfume Clarke can’t name, but something in that takes her back to camping and shopping for her first guitar.

She’s hardly drunk enough to wax poetic, so she settles back and hands Lexa a beer, sipping hers as Lexa paints her a picture. Her parents only loosened their reins around her when they were on vacation and she’d spend the entire year longing for summer, knowing she’d waste it away running around mossy woods and vast fields, only coming back inside when she couldn’t see anything but fireflies outside.

Lexa built that hotel so it could be the same for someone else - a breath of fresh air, somewhere to find peace. And Clarke had gone out of her way to say she feels trapped in it.

Between half filled shot glasses and warming beer, they talk.

Clarke tells her how she snuck into the kitchen in the middle of the night so Octavia could teach her how to cook a risotto without Indra scolding both of them, and Lexa gives her a look between reproaching and impressed. Lexa tells her that she met Octavia after hiring Indra as a chef and asks how Bellamy is - he comes to the hotel every year and helps painting whatever they’re painting that year or Raven tame whatever new beast she’s got her hands on. Clarke manages an answer that doesn’t steer to her restraining order against Finn, and she’s pretty proud of that.

When their fourth beer rolls in, their shoes come off and Clarke turns fully to Lexa to look at her while she tells tall tales about her years as an undergrad, from breaking a guy’s jaw after a hockey game to going three days without sleeping to finish a project due. Slowly, Clarke’s socked feet find their way to Lexa’s lap - she only notices Lexa is playing with her toes when one cracks after Clarke gets too excited talking about playing at Coachella and leaving with a broken arm.

They share childhood stories, from dreams to trauma - Clarke wanted to be an astronaut before she realized how much math was involved, Lexa once split her eyebrow while playing piano. They take a shot for each embarrassing memory they share and Clarke decides to call that off after Lexa starts slurring her words and Clarke still has a lot to tell.

Lexa tells her what she loves the most about living away from the city and Clarke falls a bit in love with the dew covered fields under a ridiculously starry sky. Clarke talks about what’s like to wake up in New York and go to sleep in Paris and she can swear Lexa starts reconsidering how evil city lights really are.

The moon has moved across the sky by the time Lexa gives up on her beer and Clarke nurses a shot she doesn’t want to take - she’s just the right amount of drunk and Lexa is telling her about constellations they can’t see in the city and Clarke sees them all reflected in her green eyes.

“Is this a date?” Clarke asks because she needs to know.

Only when Lexa peels her eyes from the sky to look at her is that Clarke notices how close they are. Lexa pauses and something dangerous starts growing within Clarke, “If you want it to be.”

Her eyes dart to Clarke’s lips for a moment before meeting hers again and, watching those hooded eyes trained on her like she’s the only thing that matters in the world, Clarke thinks back to all those months she spent her heart chipping at the edges, little by little, day by day, until she was left with nothing but broken pieces. When Lexa’s eyes glint as bright as the stars in them, Clarke starts to believe she’ll become whole again.

She leans in, until their noses touch, until they’re only a breath away. Clarke hears drumroll and she can’t tell if it’s the anticipation or her heart. Their breaths mingle, their eyes fall closed, Clarke reaches up t-

“Shit,” Lexa hisses as she jolts away, the front of her sweater growing darker as the liquid seeps in, the shot glass Clarke had dropped rolling past the blankets until it stops in a corner.

Clarke lets out a breath, shuffling back and giving Lexa some space to assess the damage to her sweater. The moment is gone, the thickness in the air when two people are about to kiss dissipates quickly and Clarke turns her head to the sky once more. She counts the stars, tries to remember whatever constellation Lexa showed her, and she realizes that the prospect of spending a few weeks under that doesn’t feel so dooming anymore.

When Lexa suggests they drive back, Clarke can’t find an excuse to stay.

They make it to the hotel when all the lights are out and Lexa’s eyes are drooping with sleep. They walk in silence past the parking lot and into the hotel, the crickets on the trees being the only sound filling the air as their fingers brush together. When Lexa leans in and presses a kiss on Clarke’s cheek before walking down the hall to her room, Clarke lets herself to shamelessly grin with a joy she could swear she’d never feel again.

Kicking her boots once she closes her door behind her, Clarke looks at her guitar lying on the bed, discarded clothes thrown on top - for the first time since she got here, she doesn’t feel utter dread at the sight of it, she doesn’t feel like she might throw up at the mere thought of getting her notebook out and trying to write a new song.

She picks up her guitar.   
****


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to listen to Eliza singing the song in this chapter, [you can do so here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcHNOerCFfw)

**PART FIVE**

As she parks the wheelbarrow by the shed and balances the fork on its wall, Lexa realizes how stereotypical she looks.

Few outfits scream " _ lesbian farmer _ " louder than a dirty henley shirt paired with washed out jeans and work boots. Add a flannel shirt wrapped around her waist and a folded bandana keeping her braided hair off her face, and you have Lexa's exact outfit.

She'd argue it's a comfortable and practical outfit, since she's working on the fields all day to make sure the farm is ready for winter, but deep down she knows she's a walking cliche. And it goes further than an outfit too - not only is she dressed to go pick up girls, but she also has a crush on the one person guaranteed to make her eat her feelings and wash it down with scotch once it’s all said and done.

There's a reason Octavia and Lincoln hid their relationship for so long. Lexa has never been shy about her politics when it comes to romance in the hotel - no relationships between staff members, absolutely no relationships with guests. But working at a countryside hotel doesn't really allow for too many options for finding love.

She knows it. She understands it. She knew this going in.

Lexa thought she'd be fine. After all, she had been in love before, she had been in love and decided it just wasn't for her. She thought she'd be fine caring after her hotel, building her own little empire in the middle of nowhere, occasionally finding a girl at a bar to help her take care of her needs, forgetting the idea of having someone to share it all with. And she had been just fine, right up until Clarke started laughing at her poor attempts at jokes and playing guitar in the garden she tended to herself.

Yet, somehow, having a crush on a  _ guest _ isn’t the worst of her problems - not when said guest is an international celebrity getting over a very public and very messy break up.

Pocketing her work gloves, Lexa tucks flyaway hair back under her bandana, making her way to the back door. She’s hoping Octavia will be kind enough to make something to feed half the hotel staff working at the barns. With winter knocking on the door, they’re all hands on deck when it comes to making sure everything is prepared, no extra pair of hands dismissed. By Colorado standards, they’re  _ late _ \- the first snowfall is due in a few days and while they’ve spent the best part of the week storing hay and building new fences, they still have a long way to go before they can breathe easily again.

After an entire morning staking posts to make a new fence, Lexa is tired, hungry and not at all looking forward to swing an axe all afternoon. She might straight up kiss Octavia if the chef make some tea for her - whatever  _ top secret _ spices she use are enough to power Lexa for a day and a half. 

Her mind is far when she crosses the garden. She's so focused on putting one foot in front of the other and making a list of things to do before the day is over that she almost misses the soft strumming and “ _ do dodo do”  _ making its way to her. Ever since they drove down the field to drink under the stars, Clarke playing guitar has been a constant in the hotel life - Lexa wants to believe she had something to do with it, but time and time again she shoved that ridiculous thought away. In the last few days, she had grown so used to hearing Clarke’s singing whenever she went that she almost didn’t notice it.

Almost.

Lexa is halfway towards the kitchen when she turns towards the sound and finds Clarke sitting cross legged on the bench swing, her socked feet tucked under her, blond hair spilling down her shoulders. Lexa pauses and watches Clarke, the little details - her brow furrowing in concentration as she scribbles something on a notebook, her fingers grazing the strings before settling on a chord and playing it, her entire body leaning over the guitar when the one chord turns into a melody.

Torn between leaving Clarke to it and staying just a little longer, Lexa watches Clarke smile gently to herself and straighten up, moving her fingers to the strings and trying out a few chords. She plays the same melody twice, three times, scribbles something down on her open notebook, plays it once more.  She can’t help feeling like she’s intruding in a private moment, one she’s neither invited nor welcomed to, but she’s too enthralled by the sight to force herself to move.

Clarke looks up, meets her eyes, wrinkling her nose up in a childish grin and it steals Lexa’s breath. “ _ Now don't get me wrong, I'm not always sad. I read my books and play guitar in bed _ ,” Clarke sings, unbothered by the company, never letting her eyes drift away. Lexa folds her hands on her back and walks towards the swing, holding Clarke’s gaze until she looks down to change chords, “ _ I watch the movies that I know you'd hate. This house I keep cleaning, but baby I'm grieving. _ ”

The lyrics stay with Lexa.

Looking at her like this, all bundled up in cozy sweaters, pink tipped blonde hair contrasting with the green behind her, her deep voice echoing in the trees, Lexa can almost believe Clarke belongs there.

“ _ I can't shake the way I feel inside. _ ” But she doesn’t. Clarke belongs to neon lights and glamorous parties, to the stage and day long photoshoots. ” _ I never like change but I have to try, _ ” Clarke drags the last word, strumming a few more notes before slumping on top of the guitar. “And that’s all I have,” she feigns disappointment, but her voice is lighter than Lexa has ever known.

“New song?” Lexa won’t admit to knowing pretty much all of Clarke’s songs by heart, so she pretends not to know.

“Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot down these last few days,” she says and rests her guitar on the bench, slipping her feet back in her shoes, “My muse has  _ finally _ stopped being a dick, so I’m making the most of it.”

Lexa feels her stomach dropping. “You have a muse?”

“Nah, it’s just a way to talk about inspiration. And I have someone other than me to blame when my creative juices won’t flow,” Clarke says in a chuckle and Lexa nods along, pretends to know what she means. “What are you up to? You seem hot.”

Raising her eyebrows to her goddamn hairline, it takes Lexa a moment to realize Clarke means she looks  _ flushed _ . Working under the midday sun has given her skin a pinkish tone and a thin sheet of sweat, so it’s no wonder Clarke comments on it. 

That’s the thing about having a pretty girl drunkenly hit on her when they were the only two people in the universe for an entire night - even in the light of day, everything sounds flirtatious.

Lexa brushes the damp hair at the nape of her neck, suddenly feeling much warmer in the shade than she did out in the field, “We’ve been preparing the farm for winter. Making sure the horses have everything they need to be warm and well fed, repairing whatever needs to be repaired.” Clarke picks up her things, slinging the guitar strap over her shoulder, and closes the space between them. Lexa turns and falls into step with her, heading towards the kitchen - she’s been dealing with manure and dirt all morning, there’s no way she smells fresh enough for Clarke to be standing that close. “I spent the morning building a new fence with Lincoln, every year I forget how taxing manual labor is.”

Clarke nods, keeping her eyes fixed to the ground right in front of her, “Oh, so that’s why I haven’t seen you all week.” Lexa doesn’t mention  _ she _ had seen Clarke nearly every day, but she’d been too immersed in her book or songwriting or whatever she loved to do in her laptop to notice Lexa walking by,  “I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Why would I?” The question tumbles out before Lexa has the good sense to shove the words back down her throat, but she’s curious. What could she possibly have done to make Clarke think that?

“I don't know,” Clarke shrugs, “I thought maybe you saw what a mess I get when I’m drunk and decided to cut ties with me.” Lexa wraps her arms around her waist when Clarke meets her gaze, the intensity in her eyes taking her aback, “I get a little…  _ too  _ flirty when I drink.”

Her voice bears the weight of someone who got into one too many troubles because of that.

Lexa gives her what she hopes is an understanding smile. "You're a sweet drunk. Maybe a bit of a philosophical one, but sweet nonetheless," she says, keeping her eyes trained on the gravel path in the grass leading up to the back entrance of the hotel. But a memory comes to mind - Raven talking in a British accent and asking strangers for kisses - and Lexa snorts, turning to Clarke again, "You should see Raven drunk on tequila. She's like a dog, she'll hump everything in sight."

Letting out a soft laughter, Clarke asks, "You weren't avoiding me then? You were just busy with the farm?"

"I was just busy with the farm," Lexa repeats, biting back a smile. If her stomach turns when Clarke nods at her through a grin, Lexa assumes it's hunger.

"Good," Clarke nods again, clutching her guitar closer, "What are your plans for this afternoon?"

Lexa hesitates. She holds the door open for Clarke to walk in, the warmth coming from the kitchen immediately enveloping them. "I... um, I don't want to tell you," Lexa admits.

"Why not?" Clarke says between a frown and smile, and Lexa swears she can see all the wildest ideas forming in her mind, "Come on, tell me."

The door falls closed behind them and Lexa pauses, eyeing Clarke for a moment before deciding against making her promise not to make fun of her. She has been through so much in the last few months - Lexa can gather that much from what Anya forced her to read and what Clarke herself told her - that maybe a good laughter will do her good. Besides, something in those gleeful blue eyes tell Lexa she won't even mind if Clarke teases her all day.

"I'll be chopping wood," Lexa says as stoically as she can muster, slumping against the wall, "We need to have enough in storage to keep the entire hotel and the stables warm in case we have a power outage and the generator doesn't work properly. And chopping frozen wood is terrible."

To her surprise, Clarke doesn't laugh.

Lexa thought she would - between her clothes and the old Jeep parked outside, she certainly looks the part of the classic soft butch lesbian Anya insists she is. Swinging an axe to provide for her house seems like the only thing missing.

Instead, Clarke looks at her curiously, dragging her teeth across her bottom lip as if to find courage to ask for something, "Can I come watch?"

"You can join us for lunch as well if you help me convince Octavia to feed us at all," Lexa says with the faintest hint of a smile lighting up her face.

Lexa drags herself to the kitchen when Clarke skips towards the lobby to put away her guitar before meeting her downstairs again. For a moment, Lexa palms the wall to keep herself steady and takes a deep breath that turns out to be a sigh more than anything - it's just a crush, it'll pass.

She finds Octavia leaning against a recently cleaned counter, thumbing away on her phone with a basket filled with enough sandwiches and salad bowls to feed a small army.

The love declaration gets stuck in Lexa's throat when Octavia hands her a mug of steaming tea without taking her eyes from her phone. Lexa lets it warm her hands before taking a gulp - she falls short from actually hugging and kissing her cook, deciding to keep things casual before Lincoln himself beat her up, "Thanks," she raises her mug as she sips at it again, "I thought I'd have to bribe you to cook us lunch again."

"You're lucky my fiancé is working with you. I'd let you starve any other day," Octavia teases. Lexa has grown used to her sense of humor after a good few months of unease around the girl. Now, she just smiles at her.

"And what did you make for your fiancé?" Lexa peeks into the basket, finding neatly stacked salad bowls - she quickly counts them and realize Octavia packed about twice as many as there are people working in the fields.

Octavia turns, excited to show off her menu. Lexa knows she's been putting extra effort to make 'field meals' for them all week, so some appreciation is welcomed. "Barbecue pork sandwiches with sweet and sour veggie salad," she points to eat item, the sandwiches packed in individual little pockets with sauce sachets tucked in the side. Then she points the smaller basket behind that one, "And wacky cake with strawberries for dessert."

"You know, I'm starting to think Raven has a point when she says you got Lincoln through his stomach." Lexa picks up the larger basket and turns to the door to find Clarke leaning against the banister.

A smile spreads across her face when Clarke crinkles her nose up and makes her way towards them. Lexa barely manages to brings it down a notch before she realizes Octavia narrowing her eyes to look in between them both.

It's just a crush.

"Here you go," Octavia plops the smaller basket in Clarke's arms, who barely manages to avoid it tumbling to the floor, "I'll go ahead to gather everyone."

Discreet like a bull in a china shop.

They share a look before stepping outside, baskets looped around their arms in matching fashion, walking slowly towards the field near the stables. Lexa tells the tale of how Lincoln and Octavia got together and Clarke listens attentively, nodding and swooning more often than Lexa would expect. It's a beautiful story, but it tells her something about Clarke that Lexa hadn't expected - she still believes in the kind of love we learn as children, from fairytales and sweet bedtime stories.

While everyone gathers under a willow tree to flee the sun and rest before picking up work for the afternoon, Clarke suggests they eat by the wood pile Lexa is supposed to tackle soon. They get their food and make their way there, sitting in logs and eating tiny bites between conversation. All their talk comes easily, an entire week to catch up on lying between them. Lexa tells Clarke about how she almost fell from the roof when she tried to fix a leakage on the barns and their plans for delivering a mare's baby in the dead of winter. Clarke tells her about Bellamy's suggestion to add nature sounds to her new songs and how proud she is that she managed to write four entire songs in the last week alone.

They're wrapped around their own little bubble for as long as it takes for Raven to shout, "Get your asses over here. I have so many words."

Halfway towards the shade, Lexa realizes she doesn't want to share Clarke with anyone.

As they all laze around for a little longer, eating strawberries and cake, Lexa gets an earful from Raven about ' _ hoarding Clarke _ ' and ' _ how dare you go out drinking without me _ '. She doesn't really care, the memories from their almost kiss still too vivid in her mind to leave room for any sort of regrets. Clarke seems to enjoy the light banter between Raven and Anya, how Octavia stays wrapped around Lincoln's arms all along, and promises to go out drinking with them during the weekend before Lexa can convince them to drop it.

It's not a good idea. It's not. And Lexa isn't hoarding Clarke when she says that - going out and getting as drunk as Raven is suggesting is hardly a wise idea for them, let alone for a celebrity trying to stay hidden.

Lexa isn't all that subtle when she picks up the axe Lincoln had sharpened for her and suggests everyone go back to work before they come up with worse ideas to spend their weekend before marching towards the wood pile.

If Clarke stays back with Octavia to watch them working, Lexa pretends it doesn't affect her at all.

She enjoys the manual labor that comes with living in a farm, she enjoys feeling muscles she didn't even know she had in her back aching after a day out in the field, she certainly enjoys the hot shower that loosens her knots after she's done for the day and how she melts to a puddle in her bed before eight in the evening. She does it with pride and wouldn't change it for the job at Wall Street her father had lined up for her before she even left college.

But she'd be lying if she said she didn't swing the axe with a little more flare than needed when Raven mentions Clarke hasn't taken her eyes off her.

They fall into a good rhythm soon enough - Raven tosses her the logs and Lexa chops them into quarters before throwing them to the slowly growing pile. Raven's leg aches more and more as the days grow colder and, while tending after the horses doesn't demand much from her - in fact, she swears that riding the horses eases the pain considerably; but she's too proud when it comes to admitting she's in pain for Lexa to fully believe in her -, Lexa can't ask for her to walk miles while digging holes in the dirt.

By the time sweat drips down her chest and the muscles in her back scream for a break, Raven conveniently excuses herself to go get some water for them both as Clarke approaches them. Lexa narrows her eyes at the faces Raven makes her before turning to talk to Octavia, who promptly hands her two bottles of water.

"I'm heading back inside," Clarke says and Lexa feels herself nodding as she sticks her axe in the chopping block. She wipes at her forehead with the back of her forearm, feeling too hot even with her sleeves rolled up, and Clarke chuckles at her, "How did you get dirt in your face?"

Lexa gives her a questioning look, but Clarke reaches out to wipe her thumb on her cheek a few times. "The wood isn't exactly clean. I'm sure I have a few bits of dirt and splinter in my hair as well." Her words come out in a sluggish way that Lexa doesn't know if she should attribute to the heat or the way Clarke's fingers linger on her skin.

"I might be crossing a line here, but-" Clarke bites her lip, looks up through her lashes and Lexa wonders for a moment if she can get heat stroke when the temperature barely touches the late forties, "You look fucking hot swinging that axe." Clarke's voice is low and Lexa doesn't even have time to process her words, let alone come up with an answer, before she's speaking again, "Do you wanna do something later? I know you're gonna be super tired, but maybe dinner?"

Lexa nods dumbly, lost in Clarke's blue eyes - they get lighter than she could imagine under the afternoon sun, "I'll come get you when I'm done. And showered and dirt free." Clarke smiles at her, nodding once, and makes her way back to the hotel, leaving Lexa dumbfounded and love struck.

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**PART SIX**

Closing the door as soon as she's inside her room and leaning heavily against it, Clarke closes her eyes, lets out a giggle that has been building up in her chest since she walked out on Lexa, feels a lightness she didn't even think she was able to feel still.

She missed this.

In the last few months, Clarke had known heartbreak in its devious details. Light hearted banter and sweet flirting had no place in 3am fights that ended up with her washing her own blood from their bedroom wall. Finn had been hell in her life - they hurt each other, his temper didn't help, her own sense of self preservation flying out the window as the right words flew out his mouth. Breathing deeply still hurt - apparently, ribs don't heal so easily when the blows don't stop - and she remembers Finn spit out blood when she gave him a black eye to match hers.

The first crack in their relationship is clear in her mind - she had travelled to a little town in France to get drunk with a few friends and didn't call him in a week, came back to find him nearly punching Bellamy, came back to find the deep fire she'd grow used to burning in his eyes. It's almost as clear as what had been the last straw - an almost punctured lung, coughing up blood, being told no one would ever love her, trying to believe that wasn't true.

With Lexa, it's easier to believe that wasn't true at all.

It's painful to realize how far she had to fall before she could cling to whatever self respect she had left and make her way back up. But she's making her way back up, back to who she was before the first broken rib, before blood being drawn from her lips, from her heart.

With Lexa, she's almost back to the girl who flirts shamelessly, likes to make pretty girls blush, doesn't flinch when someone raises their hand to touch her face.

In her defense, Lexa is incredibly soft, easy to tease, to make blush with a single compliment - which she wouldn't guess from the first time she saw Lexa, all hard edges and intense stares. 

Clarke bites her bottom lip, trying in vain to keep her grin from spreading all over her damn face, and pushes away from the door. With one glance around the room, it's obvious that Clarke made a home out of it. From the clothes lying on a messy pile on a chair designated for clothes that aren't that clean but not dirty enough yet to the polaroid pictures pinned to the mirror above the vanity, it feels like she could live in it. 

Walking to her dresser, she picks up her phone. She left it charging overnight and forgot to get it when she went down for breakfast - that's the biggest sign that she's settling in just fine in this place entirely forgotten by civilization. It's not that she doesn't miss the streets that never stop and the neon signs that glow through the night, it's just that she's finding her peace among a tiny library and flowers in the garden.

She turned all notifications off, leaving only Bellamy's and a few others, so she pays attention to that, ignores all other red bubbles asking for her eyes. His texts pop in her screen and she glances over it-

**Bellamy (11:49pm)** :   _ that's really good, Clarke! record more when you can and send it my way, i'll show it to the  studio _

She has almost two entire songs ready to go, and makes a mental note to record them - maybe near the forest, to add those nature sounds, if the wind isn't too bad.

**Bellamy (3:17am)** :  _ guess who hooked up with Echo? fucking finally am i right _

Clarke laughs at that, taps to give it a thumbs up. They've been fighting so much for months now, she's glad they finally realized it was all just pent up sex tension.

**Bellamy (1:20pm)** :  _ quick question what's up with Lexa? O tells me you two are pretty cozy _

**Bellamy (1:21pm)** :  _ i mean seriously, it's great that you're flirting and getting back on that horse and all that but wasn't she a stuck up bitch until two minutes ago _

**Bellamy (1:21pm)** :  _ wait did this all happen in that night by the river? bc you got suspiciously defensive _

Rolling her eyes, Clarke pockets the phone for a moment, picks up the guitar from her bed and lets it fall snuggly to its case, takes the notebooks, a few odd clothes, sets everything on the chair, takes her time to think of what to answer.

Truth be told, she didn't want to share that night with anyone else. Truth be told, Bellamy isn't all that far from being right.

Clarke toes out of her shoes and climbs on her bed, bringing her laptop with her, thinking about going downstairs to get some coffee, giving up on that the moment her head hits the pillow. Fishing her phone out of her pocket, Clarke rereads the last two messages. Bellamy can be such a schoolgirl when talking about Clarke's love life - she can picture him wiggling his eyebrows at her, leaning his chin on his palm, smiling knowingly when she says something that implies either sex or feelings.

They hadn't had those talks since few first few weeks with Finn.

**Clarke (1:50pm)** :  _ she's actually pretty chill. she blushes like crazy whenever i compliment her _

**Bellamy (1:50pm)** :  _ Lexa??? blushing??? are you sure? _

Turning to lie on her side, Clarke giggles - it's like Bellamy had been waiting for her answer with his phone clutched on his palm. She powers her laptop on and sets to answer as she waits for it to come to life.

**Clarke (1:51pm)** :  _ yeah, i know it doesn't look like she could. her smile is also the prettiest. _

**Clarke (1:52pm)** :  _ i think i like her, bel _

Even typing those words makes her heart twist, beat just that much faster, ache with something she thought she'd never feel again. 

Locking her phone to take a breath, to open Netflix and put Friends on - she's in that 'they don't know we know they know we know' episode on her rewatch and that's bound to distract her, to shut her heart up. She can't say she's not weary - her bruises are barely turning yellow, barely starting to heal - but something in the way Lexa leans towards her when she speaks, focuses all her attention on her, cares so clearly, something in that makes her that much lighter.

Clarke turns to her phone as the episode starts playing, curling up on her side and chuckling when she sees Bellamy's texts.

**Bellamy (1:52pm)** :  _ i'm!!!!!!!! _

**Bellamy (1:52pm)** :  _ you go get the girl!!!! _

**Bellamy (1:53pm)** :  _ do you need me to go down there and give her the whole 'if you hurt her i'll break something of yours, like your leg' talk? because i will _

**Bellamy (1:53pm)** :  _ she's probably stronger than i am but details _

Her eyes glance up to her laptop screen, but she doesn't see the intro she always claps along. She sees Bellamy towering over Lexa, giving her his standard big brother talk, threatening to beat her up if she hurts Clarke. She sees Lexa nodding politely, because she would. She sees herself wrapping an arm around Lexa's waist, pressing her nose to her temple, whispering something that makes her chuckles.

**Clarke (1:57pm)** :  _ i think i'm good for now, but i'll let you know when you can get your ass handed to you _

**Clarke (1:58pm)** :  _ we're actually having dinner together later today _

Between tips on how to get into Lexa's pants and laugh tracks, Clarke loses track of time.

They come up with a pretty solid game plan for Clarke, going from tonight's dinner all the way to drinking at the bar tomorrow, that should end with them both rolling in bed together. Clarke laughs and goes along with it, enjoys the lightness in their texts, something they hadn't had in a long while. She doesn't exactly plan on "accidentally tripping and falling on Lexa's lap" at the bar, but Bellamy is teasing her instead of trying to mend her broken heart - she'll indulge him.

It doesn't registers with her how late it must be until there's a soft knock on the door.

Clarke pads to the door with socked feet, her phone forgotten in bed, an episode still playing on her laptop, and opens the door. She finds Lexa looking soft - there's no word to describe it - with her hair still a bit damp from showering, thrown over one shoulder, her flannel shirt giving way to a cozy oversized sweater, her cheeks slightly rosy from working all day under the sun.

"Hey," Clarke manages to find her voice, leaning against the door, "Is it time for dinner already?"

"Uh, no, it's-" Lexa stumbles in her words, glancing at her wrist to check the time, "It's barely three." Clarke frowns in question, her mind rushing to find an explanation before Lexa gives her one, "I know we agreed on dinner but I was wondering if you wanted to go somewhere else first."

The formal words, the way Lexa holds herself a bit too tall - it's endearing. "Sure, let me just get my shoes. Come on in," Clarke walks towards the middle of her room, fishing her shoes from where they landed under the bed. Lexa hesitates at the door before clasping her hands behind her and walking no more than two steps in, like she's intruding somehow, like this isn't her hotel, like she doesn't literally own this room. 

Clarke shushes her heart and laces up her shoes.

Reaching for her phone, she shoots Bellamy a quick "guess who has a date before her dinner date? talk to you later" and puts it in her pocket. She feels it vibrating against her skin half a minute later, once, twice, three time - she bites down on her bottom lip, keeping herself from giggling even imagining what those texts must say.

There's a lull where she waits for Lexa to tell her something, hint to where they're going at least, anything. But Lexa simply steps aside, nods for Clarke to go first, follows her as they walk the hallway, go down the stairs, reach the front door, pick up their coats - because it is November and even if it's a warm day, it's cold.

"So," Clarke starts as they both shrug their coats on, more to distract herself from the way Lexa pulls her hair from under the strap of the satchel she swings over her shoulder than anything else, "Is the work all done for today?"

"Not really," Lexa says without looking at her, stepping into the cool afternoon, "Lincoln is still out there with a few of the guys, but Raven and I called it a day earlier. Her leg starts hurting a lot in the end of the day and I-" she pauses, looks at Clarke, gives her a tiny smile, barely a quirk of her lips, "I had better plans."

Her stomach swishes and turns, knowing very well she's the reason Lexa quit work while there was still plenty of daylight left. A smile spreads wild on her face as she rolls her eyes, "I bet you do that for all the pretty girls."

"Not all of them," Lexa says in a playful voice, looking back at Clarke over her shoulder as she turns right, falling in step on a gravel path that goes alongside the hotel, "Just the ones who can sing."

It's a line, Clarke knows that it's just a line, but it works.

They walk to the back of the hotel, finding a beaten path there that leads them to a forest Clarke wouldn't dare to explore on her own. They talk about nothing, about their days, about Octavia's cooking, about where they want to travel to, about how they celebrate holidays. They talk as they make their way into the dense forest, walking on ground fluffy with dead leaves, leaning on moss covered trees when they step on something slippery, chuckling as they help the other straighten up.

It's all longing touches and whispered truths, echoing through the trees. Every detail about it - the soft light raining down on them, the nature sounds she can't make out just yet, the pretty girl telling her where to go - makes Clarke breathe in and hope she's not in a movie. Every detail about it makes Clarke come up with a soundtrack for this moment.

Right then, in the middle of the forest, Clarke finds herself picking and choosing a handful of songs from her never ending mental library. It's not odd for her to do that, heavens know she has more playlists on her phone than she can count. But she hasn't done that in months, hasn't felt light enough to do so ever since all the nightmare started.

Now Clarke can't help but hum along to something that would match the way Lexa skips over a fallen log, the way she reaches out her hand for Clarke to take it, to help her make the crossing.

"What are you humming?" Lexa asks once Clarke makes is safely over the log, but doesn't let go of her hand - that detail alone is enough to make her breathing hitch in her throat.

"Oh, it's just a song that has been stuck in my head," Clarke lies, intertwines her fingers with Lexa's, looks down to make sure she isn't stepping in anything that will land her on her ass, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was doing it."

"It's okay," Lexa says, tugging Clarke closer to her, "Sing to me."

"What, here?"

"Yeah, while we get to where I wanna take you."

"I- okay." With the wild hammering of her heart against her ribcage, no one could guess she does it for a living. Clarke swallows past the lump in her throat, looks up at Lexa, "Do you know the song? You can sing along with me."

"No, I don't think I know it," Lexa says, steering them to another direction, her fingers clinging to Clarke's "And anyway, I'd just butcher it. I can't sing to save my life." Somehow, that only makes Clarke wish she could hear Lexa singing, hear her stumble over words she doesn't know, hear her laughing when Clarke gets a chord wrong.

" _ Sweet creature, had another talk about where it's going wrong but we're still young _ ," Clarke starts, her voice echoing across the trees, coming back to her as she grows in volume and confidence. It's different, singing to a crowd that knows and admires her work, and singing to the girl she likes.

Lexa leads them down a path Clarke wouldn't know how to get out of and she thinks she hears water, maybe, " _ We don't know where we're going but we know where we belong, and ohhhh, we started, two hearts in one home _ ." 

" _ It's hard when we argue, we're both stubborn, I know. But oh, sweet creature, sweet creature, wherever I go, you bring me home _ ," Clarke clings to Lexa's arm with her free hand, all but wrapping herself around her, moving together.

" _ Sweet creature, sweet creature, when I run out of road, you bring me home. _ "

They clear out of the mossy forest, hands still clutched together, and Clarke hears it before seeing anything - a soft sound of water tumbling on itself, coursing past stones, hurrying to somewhere no one knew of. They make it past the last bush and Clarke sees the waterfall in all its glory, a wall of satin threaded with silver surging and plunging down the mountain, toppling into the pool only to calm down under the afternoon sun.

Clarke swears it makes her heart skip a bit.

"We're here," Lexa says like it's no big deal, like the clear water flowing towards them is anything less than divine, like the little frogs Clarke makes out as they get closer to it don't feel the same way.

"Oh, Lex. It's-" Clarke can't find the words, her eyes trying to catch every detail, from the wet rocks covered in the same moss the stones in the forest had been to the plants waving gently in the depths of the pool. "Wow, it's breathtaking."

Clarke turns to look at Lexa, finding that her eyes are already glued to her, "Yeah, it is."

"Why did you bring me here?" her voice drips with something the wants to shove back down, to swallow up and never let it see the light of day again - but the water hushes towards her and Lexa's eyes are so, so green.

"I thought you'd like it." Lexa shrugs, gently tugging at her hand and Clarke takes a step forward, "I thought it might help you start liking nature a little more."

"Nature and I are in good terms now. As long as the bees stay away from me," Clarke jokes and takes another step, her free hand holding onto the pocket of her coat to keep herself steady as she looks up - Lexa's eyes are painfully green and Clarke can feel then staring into her soul.

"The bees won't do anything." It's the kind of conversation that isn't going nowhere, anywhere other than a kiss, a touch, a forbidden thing.

"You don't know that," Clarke whispers, tilting forward.

Lexa breathes in sharply, the green in her eyes almost disappearing, "Well, it's too cold for us to get in but we could sit down for a while, I brought some wine."

She barely registers her own words, too focused on the way Lexa wets her lips, the way the waterfall casts a glow onto them as the sun reflects in the water, "Trying to get me drunk again?"

"Definitely not," Lexa swallows hard, leans forward, lets out a half chuckle that Clarke feels on her cheek, on her lips - they both remember what happened the last time they drank together.

Clarke squeezes her fingers against Lexa's, taking her eyes from her lips to meet hers again, "Scared?"

"Terrified," Lexa breathes out.

A hand settles on the small of her back and Clarke sucks in a breath, gets it stuck in the throat, never making its way to her lungs. She glances at Lexa's full, plump lips, imagines what they'll taste like, how they'll feel against hers, peels her eyes from them to look at her eyes. Her heartbeat does the drumroll a first kiss asks for, hammering wildly and out of rhythm in her ribcage, and Clarke leans in.

And Lexa leans back. Clarke barely sees her moving through her half closed lips, barely keeps herself upright when Lexa takes a step back, two. "I- I'll set a place up for us to sit, wait a minute."

Clarke might as well have jumped right into that waterfall with the cold that washes over her, every muscle relaxing and tensing up at once. Her lungs go empty as she breathes out, the moment completely broken, throwing her off balance. She looks at Lexa - beautiful, frustrating, Lexa - throwing a thin blanket down where the rocks meet the hard ground from the forest, sitting cross legged in a corner, taking out a bottle of wine and two glasses from her satchel bag.

Running her hands through her hair to clear her thoughts, Clarke makes her way towards her. Halfway there, she pauses, looks at Lexa, fishes her phone out of her pocket. With a slide of her finger, Clarke lands on the camera and frames the waterfall along with Lexa - the water thunders down like melted honey, all white and clear against the dark rocks, the only color in the picture coming from the red blanket sitting on the floor and the wine Lexa is tilting back to her lips.

"Hey, Lex!" Clarke shouts, quickly growing fond of the nickname. At the sound of her name, Lexa turns to her and Clarke watches through her phone the way Lexa searches for her, takes a moment to realize she's waiting to take a picture, strikes a pose holding out her wine glass, a smile gracing her lips.

Clarke looks at the pictures for a moment too long, dragging herself to the blanket with a stupid grin on her lips, accepting the wine glass Lexa holds out for her as she sits down. 

"You seem-" Lexa starts and pauses, giving Clarke just enough time to swallow her wine without it going down the wrong pipe, "I don't want this to come out the wrong way but you seem better than when you first got here."

"Yeah, I'm healing," Clarke admits, "Bellamy was right when he said this place would help me."

Lexa hums in agreement, tilting her own wine glass towards Clarke before gazing over her shoulder to the waterfall behind her, "Bellamy has always struck me as a smart guy."

"He has his moments, but don't let him hear us." He'd be particularly insufferable if he knew Clarke is seriously considering using his cheap tricks to get to Lexa. Because she knows Lexa likes her, knows she wanted that kiss as much as she did, she just can't understand why she pulled away, "Hey, are we still up for dinner?"

"Of course," Lexa turns back to her, her lips quirking up in a shy smile, her eyes telling Clarke she isn't wrong, "If you're not tired of me by then, that is.”

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

**PART SEVEN**

Taking a sip from the one beer she's been nursing for all of the three hours they've been at this bar, Lexa makes a face.

It's warm.

Her hands, wrapped around the bottle, had warmed it enough for the beer to foam in her mouth, go down smoothly as a pound of bricks, leave a foul aftertaste in her mouth that makes her swallow once, twice more in an attempt to make it go away.

There's a reason for her to be gripping her beer bottle so fiercely.

And that reason has a name, blue eyes turned foggy with alcohol, a cleavage that has threatened to spill out of a low cut shirt all evening and is currently running her hands through her blonde hair, piling it on top of her head as she twists her hips to the rhythm of the music, shamelessly grinding against Raven in the middle of the dance floor.

It's not a secret Lexa didn't want to come out to a bar tonight. She had made it clear that a 'girls night out' was a bad idea - more than once, with several arguments, in varying levels of frustration. But she had been miserably outnumbered. Even Octavia, who had refused to trade her one night alone with Lincoln for cheap alcohol and bad music, had told Lexa to "loosen up and live a little". It got to a point where all she could do was agree to be their designated driver to make sure they all get back to the hotel in one piece, to make sure no one ends up in a ditch, or in bed with someone they shouldn’t, or in the emergency room after alcohol poisoning almost kills them.

Being sober had seemed like a wise idea in the drive from the farm. Anya had chugged down a whole beer before they even made it past the gates - because of course Anya would pre game going to a bar - and Raven spent more time looking at attractive people in a dating app than making any conversation. They'd be needing help getting into bed - their beds, Lexa made a mental note, no one would be having a drunk one night stand under her watch.

But what made her be sure getting more than one drink in her would be a disastrous idea was Clarke. From the moment Clarke climbed into the Jeep, a buzzing energy coming from her in waves as she tossed her hair to the side and giggled when reaching for the radio, Lexa knew she'd need every ounce of self control to keep her hands to herself.

Self control that is quickly waning.

Setting her beer down on the counter and picking at the damp label with the short nail of her thumb, Lexa decides to keep her eyes there, to focus on making it out alive - because if she stares at the skin peeking out from under Clarke’s shirt each time her hands go up she might actually burst into flames. 

She has half the label in tiny pieces decorating the bar top before Anya plops down on the stool beside her, four shots balanced in between her fingers. Lexa can only hope they're not all meant for her, even if she knows it's a pipe dream.

“Want some?” Anya asks, almost distractedly, tilting a shot glass towards Lexa before tilting it back, downing the entire thing in one big gulp. Lexa feels her stomach burning with the mere sight of it, but Anya doesn't even grimace when what Lexa can safely assume is pretty cheap vodka hits her lips.

Lexa reaches for a menu forgotten on the bar and skims it, skipping the handful of cocktails they offer and the fifteen different types of beer alone, going straight for the appetizer - her stomach is growling without the constant influx of alcohol to keep it full, her afternoon snack a distant memory by now. Ordering food at a bar when she's a far cry from the munchies has never been something Lexa would be caught dead doing, but the burgers here come with sweet potato fries.

Between Anya downing another shot and Raven holding onto Clarke to keep herself from falling face first on the floor, Lexa orders both japaleño poppers and onion rings, hoping they have enough grease for the three drunk girls to have a fighting chance against the booze.

She’s just finished placing her order when laughter floats towards her. 

“I don’t wanna deal with her,” Anya says, slurring her words and downing a third shot in as many minutes, which is not a good sign for her - well, it’s not a good sign for anyone, but for Anya it means she’s a vodka tonic and a half from causing property damage to the bar. 

Lexa turns around to see who Anya means - she half knows she means Raven, they’ve been at odds for the last few days - but the sight that greets her almost has her reaching for the fourth shot Anya is currently having a staring contest with. Clarke and Raven stumble rather than walk back from the makeshift dancefloor, arms linked, their cheeks flushed from dancing, matching smiles on their faces.

Raven shouts something over the music to Clarke when they’re free from the sea of people, still a little away from the counter, but the bar is packed - as it should be, considering is a Saturday night and the Ark is the only half decent bar in town - and Lexa doesn’t hear what she says. She only sees Clarke throwing her head back in a belly laughter, blindly reaching out to Raven’s bicep.

If Lexa feels a pang of jealousy, she just hopes she can bury it all under burgers and sweet potato fries.

It all takes a single moment to happen - Clarke leans in to shout something back to Raven, her hand letting go of her arm to rest on her hip, and takes a step forward, trips on her ankle, loses balance, lurches forward, heading face first to the countertop. Lexa reaches out out of pure instinct, her reflexes making her close her arms around Clarke’s waist, pull her closer, gauging her reaction, holding onto her hips until she finds her balance again.

Somewhere between arms flailing and Clarke squealing in surprise, Lexa settles her arm around her in a half hug, tugging at her until their sides are touching - so she can make sure Clarke stays upright, Lexa tells herself, nothing more. “You’re okay?” 

Clarke hums and nods, throwing her arm around Lexa’s shoulder, leaning in, her eyes glued to her lips as she speaks in a sultry voice, “I’m all good, as long as you keep your arm right there.”

It’s not Clarke leaning further against her that makes Lexa’s stomach sink. It’s not the way she can feel Clarke’s weight against her side, or how her blue eyes are blown wide with the low light and excitement, or her fingers pressing almost possessively against her collarbone.

It’s her perfume mixed with beer and sweat - Clarke smells like drunk kisses by the fire, like flirting with someone way out of your league, like danger and desire.

Raven chooses that moment to slam her palms on the countertop, pushing up to her toes to order another beer, and Lexa can’t tell if she’s thankful for the distraction or if she wants to ignore her completely and focus on Clarke, on how her chest is still heaving from dancing, on her arm pulling her ever so closer.

“Just a heads up,” Raven says after she downs half the beer in one single gulp, leaning against the counter, her back to Anya, “I’m not leaving until I find someone to take me home. My dry spell has become a fucking drought and it ends today.”

Clarke slumps further against Lexa, her free hand coming to rest on her thighs, and Lexa can’t do much more than clench her teeth, pray to any gods willing to listen to give her strength. “Wait, I thought you two were a thing,” Clarke slurs her words ever so slightly, gesturing in between Raven and Anya, and Lexa almost elbows her.

“We  _ would _ be if a certain someone weren’t a goodie goodie who can’t even think about pissing off her boss,” Raven rolls her eyes, glancing over her shoulder to Anya, watching as the blonde ignores her and downs her fourth shot like she isn’t the subject of their conversation. Raven sighs and points an accusatory finger at Lexa, “It’s all your fault.”

“I’ve been much more lenient towards that rule lately.” She hasn’t, not really, but she’s so goddamn close to breaking it herself that she needs to get down from her high horse. “You see Octavia and Lincoln.”

“They hid their love for  _ years _ before you accepted it,” Raven shouts to anyone willing to listen - which, truthfully, isn’t many people at all; everyone else seems rather preoccupied with getting shit faced and grinding on anything with a pulse.

“Four months. It was four months,” Lexa tries to defend herself, her voice dying down as the bartender sets three plates in front of her. She pushes the onion rings towards Anya as Raven takes the japaleño poppers, shoving an entire piece in her mouth and washing it down with beer - well, at least they’re eating.

Her stomach growls loudly at the sight of the burger - the patty alone is enough to feed a family of four and Lexa is  _ starving _ . But Clarke shifts, leans over her to grab a few sweet potato fries, settles her weight against Lexa just so that her hand hikes up her shirt, just so that she has her palm on the warm skin of her waist.

Lexa can barely breathe through the knot in her throat. She can’t stomach anything.

She’s dead sober, she knows she should do the polite thing and adjust her hug around Clarke, pull down her shirt and keep the fabric in between their skins, knows she should just offer a damn stool to Clarke and let her be.

But she’s inebriated enough by Clarke that she can’t even think about doing any of that.

“Clarke,” Anya calls, bringing her onion rings closer the them, biting into one in the pause she makes, “Your shirt is gorgeous.” Lexa narrows her eyes at her comment, almost worried as to where Anya is going with this. “I bet it would look so much better on Lexa’s bedroom floor.”

Raven laughs so hard she chokes with her beer and Anya has to slap her on the back a few times to get her breathing again. Lexa focuses on that for a moment, focuses on what’s in front of her and  _ not _ in the way Clarke ever so discreetly draws her hand from where it’s resting on her shoulder to her neck, sinking her fingers in her hair.

When she finds her voice again, Lexa scolds at Anya, “Are you- are you flirting with Clarke  _ for _ me?”

“Well, somebody’s gotta do it.” Anya quirks her eyebrows in pure disbelief and points at their general direction. “And you’re already all snuggly with her anyway.”

Lexa adjusts her grip on Clarke, finally tugging her shit down and settling her hand on the waist of her jeans, hooking her thumb through a belt look, “I’m just holding her up.”

No one believes her and truth be told, the lie isn’t even convincing herself. Anya rolls her eyes so far back Lexa almost tells her she’ll pop a nerve if she keeps that up, but Raven doesn’t seem willing to let that conversation die. “Come on, Woods. I bet she doesn’t bite.”

“Would you guys stop?” Weren’t Raven and Anya fighting until two seconds ago? Lexa can’t help thinking they both ganging up on her isn’t something that happened in the spur of the moment.

“Do you bite, Clarke?” Anya asks offhandedly, reaching out for a japaleño popper and biting into it like she isn’t working her way to being fired.

“No, not usually,” Clarke indulges them, and Lexa turns just enough to see her smiling - that easy smile that comes with squinting eyes when your blood has turned into mostly alcohol, “Unless we’re doing something kinky.”

“See, Lex!” Anya squeals - she  _ squeals _ , for goodness sake - and Lexa doesn’t have the brainpower to answer, not when warm liquid lead pools in her stomach, “She’ll even act out your fantasies, atta girl.”

It doesn’t help that Clarke has started to run her nails up and down her neck, just lightly enough to make Lexa shiver.

“Come on, show it on me,” Raven says, a bit too excitedly for Lexa’s taste. She pushes away from the counter and tugs her shirt down, cranking her neck one way and another, setting her feet apart - it looks like she’s getting ready for a fight. “Show Lexa you don’t bite. Kiss me.”

“Clarke-” 

Lexa tries to warn her, to talk her out of it, but Raven cuts her short, “Well, are  _ you  _ going to kiss her? Because if not, I’m going for it.”

She can’t do much more than grit her teeth and keep quiet, because she won’t kiss Clarke, not now, not when she’s halfway into a drunken stupor. Lexa watches with her stomach in a knot as Clarke giggles and lets go of her, takes a wobbly step forward, pulls Raven towards her, meets her halfway in a sloppy kiss. Their lips don’t find each other at first, landing in the wrong place, but they soon get their bearings, find a rhythm in the kiss, and Lexa grips the edge of her seat to keep herself from tearing them apart.

She only breathes again once they’re more than half an inch apart.

“Good. Very good. Firm, but tender,” Raven says, her lips still wet from the kiss, and it makes Lexa’s hands prickle with the urge to wipe it off, “I'd recommend you to a friend.”

Raven reaches for her beer and raises it towards Clarke, who laughs and half bows in thanks. It’s a light hearted moment, it doesn’t mean much - it’s not like Raven is in love with Clarke, it’s not like they’ll walk away from the bar with their hands clasped together. But Lexa can’t help the nasty feeling simmering in her stomach.

Clarke turns to Lexa, closing the space between them, settling in between her legs, and settles her palms around her neck, “Do you want to kiss me now?”

“Ask me again tomorrow,“ is all Lexa can manage, her voice catching in her throat, the urge to lean in almost too much.

“When I'm sober?”

“When you're sober.”

“I was sober yesterday and you didn't kiss me,” Clarke says with bitterness in her voice and pushes away from her, “We were alone, with the trees and a fucking waterfall, and you didn't kiss me.”

Lexa doesn’t try to plead innocence - they were sober yesterday and Lexa backed away the moment before their lips touched. But seeing Clarke mad at her doesn’t agree with her either, “Clarke-”

“Let's do some shots!” Clarke shouts, ignoring whatever Lexa might have said, turning away from her.

The rest of the night goes by in a haze of cheap alcohol spilling over shot glasses and cold dread coiling in Lexa’s stomach, pure fear that she ruined what they could have had before they even built up the courage to start.

Raven lasts for two entire shots before her phone pings with a string of short, clipped messages - the telltale signs of a booty call from someone named Wick; the little screwdriver emoji beside his name tells Lexa he either works at the hardwood store or Raven had this in mind all along. With one last hopeful glance towards Anya, Raven waves them goodbye.

Lexa makes a mental note to talk to Anya about it once she’s sober. It pains her to see her friend being so stubborn when she could be the one leaving earlier with the girl she clearly likes - which does not apply to her, it  _ doesn’t _ , it’s a whole different situation; her lie doesn’t get her far.

Her burger has gone cold and unappetizing, but she nibbles at it, pops sweet potato fries in her mouth as she watches Clarke ignore her, pay full attention to the peanut bowl in front of her instead. She tells herself it’s fine, but the bitter taste in her mouth has nothing to do with her beer gone stale.

Anya gets them more shots - because if she’s not kissing anyone, she might as well get drunk. Clarke nods in agreement, clinking their glasses together and downing one shot after another, after another, after another.

The night grows old fast, the happy and carefree mood going sour.

Lexa cuts them off when Anya lets most of her upteempth shot dribble down her neck and Clarke sways so heavily on her feet Lexa has to wrap her arm around her waist again. Pushing a bottle of cold water into their hands, Lexa hauls them both to the car, ignoring Clarke’s mumbled protests - both against leaving and against having her arm around her - and pulling Anya along, hoping her yelling at random strangers won’t get her into a fight before they make it outside.

It’d be easier to look after toddlers.

Clarke falls asleep the moment her head hits the backseat and Lexa barely manages to buckle the seatbelt around her without losing sight of Anya, who decides to pick a fight with a couple smoking near the door. Lexa scolds her like she’d do with a toddler throwing a tantrum as she pulls her away from them and into the Jeep, and swears off ever bringing them both to a bar again - even more so when she has to pull over on their way back home for Anya to throw up.

She is guiding a mostly asleep Clarke towards her bed after making sure Anya was safe and sound in her own bed when a loud song she doesn’t recognize starts playing. Lexa pauses for a moment before plopping Clarke onto her bed and reaching for the phone in her back pocket, pulling it out to see who’s calling Clarke at -  _ shit _ , 3am. Bellamy.

With a glance towards Clarke, who cuddles around her pillow and drunkenly mumbles for Lexa to ‘ _ make noise stop _ ’, Lexa slides her thumb across the screen to pick the call up.

“ _ Clarke, what the fuck have you been up to? _ ” Bellamy half shouts before Lexa can say anything.

“Bellamy? It’s Lexa. Clarke is passed out in her bed,” Lexa says, the night out finally weighing down on her. But she can’t quite keep herself from smiling when Clarke starts to snore lightly, “I think she drank too much.”

“ _ You think? No fucking shit, genius, _ ” Lexa half expected him to be drunk as well, but he’s surprisingly alert for such a late hour, sounding almost unreasonably angry too, “ _ What were you  _ thinking  _ when you let her to go that bar? _ ”

At that, Lexa squints, taking a few steps away from Clarke, talking in a low voice so she doesn’t wake her up. “Wait, what? First of all,  _ let _ her? She’s her own person-”

Bellamy interrupts her, “ _ Yeah, yeah. You can lecture me on that when Clarke isn’t blowing up the internet. _ ”

“What do you mean?”

She’s confused, but the way Bellamy sighs into the receiver tells her she isn’t about to receive good news, “ _ Someone took pictures of her doing shots and kissing a girl I’m assuming is Raven, _ ” Bellamy pauses and Lexa feels her stomach drop, “ _ It’s all over the news. _ ”

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are tumbling downhill now - there's some good ol' victim blaming by the media and Bellamy is still very much a dick.
> 
> I'm still amazed by the response this story got!! Thank you so much for everyone who jumped on board and commented, left kudos, bookmarked, read this at all. It means the world :')

**PART EIGHT**

Burrowing her face further into the crook of Bellamy’s neck, Clarke breathes him in. He smells like expensive perfume and airplane - a weird mix of instant coffee and dirty upholstery that always took her back to flying to her first real concert on the cheapest ticket she could find.

Having Bellamy in the hotel she’s learned to call home for the past month is equal parts reassuring and a kick in the guts. Clarke takes comfort in knowing she won’t have to deal with the consequences of her decisions alone - Bellamy is there, Bellamy will clean up her mess and keep her safe and sound, like he’s done a million times before.

There’s a little voice inside her head that tells her that she knew that going to that bar in the first place had been a bad idea and she shouldn’t have expected any different outcome. If that voice sounds remarkably like Lexa’s, she chooses to ignore the vibrant ‘ _ I told you so _ ’ undertones of it.

Clarke had honestly thought she’d be safe. 

In a town forgotten by civilization, where the population count stays in the three digits, Clarke had all but assumed everyone still carried flip phones. Between that and the few times she had gone to the city and stayed well under the radar, Clarke thought there would be no problems in going out with her new friends to a bar so dimly lit she could barely see what she was drinking. After neverending days holed up in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, Clarke thought she deserved to have a little fun. But it had gone to hell, because of course it had.

Clarke Griffin bringing anything over than utter havoc wherever she goes? Never heard of that.

Her phone was turned off when she woke up this morning - it should’ve been her first clue. She never turns her phone off during the night, mostly because she likes to have it ready to distract her when she can’t sleep after only a few hours, so she had assumed her battery had died. Except the little battery sign urging her to connect her phone to a power source didn’t show up when she clicked her phone to life. It simply turned on.

It was odd, sure, but Clarke left it at that. She tossed her phone on the bed as it came back to life, focusing on getting herself ready - which was a Herculean task by itself, considering she had lost count after her seventh shot last night. Her head had little men working hammers and saws in her brain, making it impossible to even open her eyes without nearly crying at the bright morning light. The salt and lime she had sucked on after each shot had burned her lips just enough for a yawn to be painful and that, combined with how her tongue felt like cotton and the way pure bile seemed to swish in her stomach, made her phone being turned off the least of her worries right after she woke up.

Clarke stumbled towards the dresser, putting one foot in front of the other with extra care after she found out that simply walking made the working men inside her brain jostle around and get unreasonably angry. Leggings and an oversized sweater with no bra and no shirt underneath seemed like the greatest outfit she's ever thought of by the time she actually managed to put it all on, and she grabbed her phone out of habit as she made her way downstairs to borrow sunglasses from anyone willing to give them.

Tying her hair in a knot on top of her head, Clarke grunted her way down the stairs, ready for coffee and death. Her first thought when Anya gave her a strange look in lieu of good morning was that she must have been in worse shape than she first assumed, but Clarke simply waved at her and made her way towards the kitchen, half glad that she didn't have to muster the energy to speak. 

A few other guests had come and gone over the weeks and the last couple had checked out two days ago - a far cry from summer, Lexa had told her. Being the single one guest in the entire hotel, Clarke didn't bother to look at menus and sit quietly at the restaurant most meals. She had all but memorized the menu anyway, and Octavia would gladly have her over in the kitchen for breakfast. Clarke was already dreaming about a tall stack of pancakes with a side of bacon when she walked into the kitchen to find three heads joined together in front of a laptop.

She thought little of it as she mumbled a barely audible “ _ morning _ ” and made her way to the coffee pot, her favorite mug in hand. Only when they all gave her the same look that Anya had given her was that Clarke paused, her coffee halfway to her lips. 

“What?” she croaked out, sipping the coffee as her eyes darted from one girl to the other. The coffee tasted almost stale in her lips and she blamed it in all the alcohol she drank last night and the lingering taste of bile - had she thrown up? “Do you have aspirin? My head is killing me.”

Octavia and Raven exchanged a glance before looking to Lexa, who shifted uncomfortably in her seat, pursing her lips into a thin line for a moment before turning the laptop screen towards Clarke, “Well, at least you got a full night of sleep.”

It took Clarke almost a full minute to focus on the screen - it was too bright and her eyes refused to work properly and her head, holy fuck, her head was about to blow up. When she did make out what Lexa was showing her, Clarke wished she had never even left the bed.

“ _ What a bad breakup can do? Clarke Griffin is kissing girls now! _ ” read under a surprisingly bright picture of Clarke with her hand on Raven’s cheek, her arm wrapped around her waist, a drunk smile in her lips. It was taken right after they kissed, Clarke’s lips still half puckered, her eyes half closed.

Fuck.

“Who-” she couldn’t make her voice work, her throat suddenly too dry - she knew it had nothing to do with being hungover and dehydrated, “How- how did you-” She sighed, tossed the mug still filled with coffee in the sink and dragged herself to a chair on the opposite side of the table.

“Bellamy called you right when we got in. I answered, he yelled,” Lexa said and Clarke had a vague memory of an annoying ringtone disturbing her as soon as she laid down to sleep, she remembered being too tired to even care about it, “He’s on his way over to figure things out.”

Clarke plopped her head on her folded arms, the world too bright and too messy for her to deal with right now, “How bad is it?”

“It’s... not good,” Raven grunted, her hangover apparently as bad as Clarke’s, “I don’t know if whoever took the picture told them, but the tabloids know who I am, where you are, all the shit.”

“Do you want to see more?” Lexa said, her voice surprisingly soft as she walked around the kitchen. Clarke felt her hair being brushed back, tucked behind her ear, and she managed to lift her head just enough to make out Lexa pushing a glass of water and a few pills towards her.

Nodding, Clarke tossed back the pills that she hoped were aspirins and took the laptop from Raven, “Better be fucking prepared, I guess.” She leaned on her fist, praying to whatever god was listening that the pills worked faster as she switched tabs.

“ _ Did Clarke Griffin move to Colorado for a girl? _ ”

“ _ Clarke Griffin shows off her kissing skills in Colorado. _ ”

“ _ Here’s what singer Clarke Griffin found so interesting in a small western town. _ ”

“ _ Clarke Griffin, Finn Collins’ ex, spotted after weeks under the radar. _ ”

“ _ What does Collins have to say about Griffin leaving him for Raven Reyes, a Coloradan horse caretaker? _ ”

Her entire day had gone by in a blur of sensational headlines, over thinking every step she ever took and a very steady pounding in her head that wouldn’t go away, no matter how many aspirins or glasses of water she took.

But now Bellamy is squeezing her middle and her mind finally seems to quiet.

“I’m sorry,” she says through stubborn tears, taking a step back and giving him room to breathe after clinging to him for a solid minute. The wind stings, bites at her tear stained cheeks, whips past the thin fabric of her sweater, and it makes her miss the comfort of Bellamy’s embrace even more.

He has been with her from day one. They were friends before she decided to hire him as her manager, knowing she could count on him to call her out on her bullshit without crushing her. And he’s been there for everything. He had been the one to give her the pep talk that made her calm enough to find her voice again for her first big concert, when her nerves got the best of her. He had been backstage to every talk show she’s ever been, either teasing her about her dress or prepping her about what to say, what to tease about, what to keep to herself. He’s been there when she won her first award and had been the first person she thanked, because she truly wouldn’t have made it without him. He’s been there to patch her up after things got tough, to nurse her hangover when she spent her night hugging a bottle of Jack, to play cards at three in the morning when she couldn’t fall asleep.

This isn’t the first scandal Clarke has been involved in and she’s pretty sure it won’t be the last. But it still feels a lot like disappointing Bellamy. He had asked her to stay hidden until he found a way to make sure Finn wouldn’t get near her, to ride out the break up under the radar, and she lasted less than a month before doing the exact opposite.

Bellamy cups her cheeks in his hands, forcing her to look at him like he always does when he has to say something important, something she shouldn’t forget, “You have nothing to apologize for. This isn’t your fault, you’ve done nothing wrong.” His voice is calm and certain, the pause between each making Clarke almost believe him. Before she can argue her case, Bellamy throws his arm around her shoulders, tugging her along, “Now let’s go inside. I need coffee and layers. How is it this cold here already? How the fuck are you surviving it?”

“It’s better than I thought,” she grips the back of his shirt and matches her step with his, taking him to the hotel. Clarke thinks back to the last time she saw him - Bellamy had driven her back from the emergency room and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t argue when he told her she would be on her way to the middle of nowhere as soon as the lawyers worked something out. “I have so much to tell you.”

He squeezes her shoulders in a hug, “Let’s get you safe first. Then you can talk my ear off.”

Clarke does have a lot of things to tell him, things that don’t fit in text messages and phone calls. She wants to tell him what’s the best spot to watch the sunset - she sent him around thirteen million pictures already, but it doesn’t come close to the real thing - and take him to the place where she wrote most of her songs, wants to play some for him to see what he thinks. 

She wants to tell him about Lexa.

Butterflies flutter in her stomach, her throat, her damn mouth with the thought of telling him about Lexa. Because he was the first person she told about Niylah, the first one she gushed about how Finn made her feel - telling Bellamy, with enough details to make it worthy of a seventh grader with a crush, is what makes everything real.

Clarke has had a lot of time to obsess over her newfound feelings for Lexa - they are still new, but there was something bubbling under the surface, something Clarke is dying to found out more about, to be able to explore without her ex looming over them like a dark cloud.

What had started with a pretty face to look at while her heart mended itself had turned into a friend she could count on to drive her to civilization and talk during quiet hours. And now it’s becoming something Clarke can’t put a name on - a  _ crush  _ sounds too childish,  _ in love  _ sounds more serious than she can handle.

It had started with someone to flirt innocently with just so she could stretch her muscles after so long had become a breath of fresh air when Lexa started flirting back.

Bellamy lets her go as they make it into the hotel and stops to kiss Anya hello as Clarke makes her way to the lounge. Clarke had promptly forgotten that Bellamy knows this hotel, these people, that he has been here before countless times. She finds Lexa standing by the coffee table, her fingers wriggling as she stares at the patch of carpet right in front of her, but the moment Clarke steps into the room, Lexa straightens up, clasps her hands together on her back.

“Did Bellamy have a good flight?” Lexa asks, so composed Clarke wonders for a moment if she imagined the nerves in her.

Clarke drags her feet towards the couch and plops down on it, slouching so badly her back was practically on the seat, “Yeah, he’s just saying hello to Anya and he’s coming here to fix my mess.” She sighs, rubs at her face and looks up to find Lexa looking at her, eyebrows knitted. “I’m tired.”

The words leave her mouth before she can shove them back down her throat - she really is tired, she’s exhausted, today lasted a whole week and the day is still not over. Clarke sees concern flashing across Lexa’s stoic face, sees her taking a step closer to her, sees the way she halts when Bellamy walks towards her.

“Hey, Lexa,” he says in a voice Clarke would call sweet if she didn’t know Bellamy. But Lexa accepts his stretched hand for a shake none, the wiser, “It’s been a while.”

“I’m sorry, Bellamy,” Lexa blurts out in a somber tone before Bellamy has finished taking out his laptop from his backpack and he freezes mid motion, Clarke freezes mid breath.

Bellamy narrows his eyes at her, “You should be. What were you  _ thinking _ ?” If his words get to her, Lexa doesn’t show, holding her head high. But there’s a vein in Bellamy’s forehead ready to pop and Clarke sits up, swallows thickly, knowing this is all her fault, no one else’s, “I asked you to keep her safe.”

“And she did,” Clarke gets up, closing the distance between them in fast strides. Bellamy is a good foot taller than her, but that doesn’t stop her from scrutinizing him with a heavy glare, “If it weren’t for Lexa, I’d have gone wild. Like Bahamas-two-years-ago wild.” Bellamy covers it up pretty well, but Clarke sees the way his eyes widen slightly. “I distinctly remember wanting to dance on the counter and strip down to my underwear just like I did back then.”

Bahamas had been fun. She had just broken up with Niylah and, while that break up hadn’t been nearly as bad as this one, Clarke made sure to enjoy every second of her newfound singlehood. She remembers fruity drinks with enough alcohol to take down a bull that somehow tasted amazing. She has a few clear flashes in between nothingness and one of the few things that are perfectly clear in her memory is her wearing nothing but her panties, dancing to some music she had never heard before.

She could have done a lot more damage than simply kissing a girl.

Granted, two years ago she didn’t have a manic ex-boyfriend threatening to kill her for “ruining his image”, but still. Things could have gone a lot worse.

Bellamy wipes at his brow, like he’s trying to get rid of a headache before it starts. “She shouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”

Clarke looks at Lexa, searching her eyes. Her jaw is clenched and her hands remain firmly set on her back, but her eyes soften when Clarke half winks at her, mustering a smile she didn’t know she had in her.

“And since when does anyone stop me?”

Lexa’s lips quirk up ever so slightly and she nods at Clarke before turning to Bellamy, her face scrunched up in worry again, “We can argue over this later. I do know I have my share of blame in this, but we should focus on the problem in hand.”

That seems to bounce Bellamy back into work, his gears turning in his head as he reaches for his laptop, “Yeah, of course,” he thumbs at his phone and turns his computer on, throwing it on the couch as he sits down, “What do you have down here so far?”

“Lincoln called in a favor with the police station and they sent in an officer, Gustus, to help him monitor the main road. No one is getting past them,” Lexa explains in an almost militar fashion, her whole posture giving more significance to the situation than Clarke thinks it’s necessary. “We cancelled all stays we had for the next week and we won’t be accepting any bookings until this is all figured out.”

“Good. Good,” Bellamy says almost distractedly as he open whatever he had been working on during the flight over and turns to Lexa, “Make sure you bill us for anything this will cost you. From overtime to losing guests.”

Lexa shakes her head slightly, focusing on Bellamy so hard Clarke can't help thinking she's actively avoiding looking her way, “I don't care about that. All that matters to me is that Clarke is safe,” she pauses for a moment and turns to Clarke, holds her gaze. Her forest green eyes make something shift within Clarke, a warmth she hasn’t felt in a long while pool in her stomach. It takes her a moment to remember she forgot what’s like to have someone care for her like this, “I’ll be in the office, if you need me.”

Clarke finds herself nodding slightly at that, a quiet ‘ _ yes, I’m fine, I’ll be okay, I’ll go to you if anything happens _ ”, and feels her entire body calming when Lexa herself nods in answer, gives her a smile that isn’t meant for anyone else to see before she slips out of the room.

Bellamy peels his eyes away from the hallway Lexa disappeared into and turns to Clarke with a smirk in his lips, “Okay, I saw that.”

“Shut up. Tell me what to do.”

Clarke drops on the couch, everything that happened since she woke up this morning weighing her down, draining all the will to stay awake from her. But the day is far from over. She shifts closer to Bellamy, angling herself so she can see his screen and the moment she does, she grunts and shuffles away. All the articles Lexa has shown her doesn’t come close to how bad the one Bellamy has open is. The first picture is the one she’s seen everywhere, her hand on Raven’s, her eyes glazed over by alcohol, but the second one takes her aback. It’s a picture she didn’t even know existed, a picture of her leaving the hospital, wearing an oversized hoodie and shorts that aren’t long enough to hide the bruises on her thighs, leaning on Bellamy. Under it all, it reads “ _ Clarke Griffin finds a (not so healthy!) way to cope after attempts to ruin Finn Collins’s reputation. _ ”

Victim blaming can be found at its finest rooted in the streets of Hollywood, this isn’t news to Clarke. But to see it so brutally clear, right under a picture of her leaving the emergency room, for fuck’s sake, is something she needs a moment to process.

But Bellamy doesn’t give her a second, doesn’t look at her to see her eyes closed, her jaw clenched, her heart beating so fast she can see the way her skin jumps up and down even through her sweater. He talks to her as her manager - there will be a time for comforting hugs and gossiping, but this isn’t it. Clarke forces herself to look at the screen, at everything Bellamy is showing her, from forums with mile long threads to speculate where exactly she is to emails from her lawyers telling her how to act from a legal point.

From what Bellamy says, from what she forces herself to listen, no one except the locals know exactly where she is - they know she’s in a tiny town in Colorado, know it’ll be only a matter of time before they figure out where this Raven Reyes girl is from, but they don’t know she’s staying in a hotel thirty minutes away from there.

The consensus between Bellamy and the lawyers - because truth be told, she doesn’t have much of a say in this anymore - is that she should leave as soon as possible, before paparazzis make their way there, before fans camp outside the hotel, before someone she has a restraining order against decides to pay her a visit. Somewhere small and distant, maybe a village in Italy or a remote apartment in Thailand.

Clarke nods, because she knows she’s supposed to - she’s done more than enough damage to her image already, she won’t argue. 

She’s not ready to leave. 

She has  _ just _ started to learn how to wind down from her hectic life and genuinely enjoy being out in nature, taking her day slow instead of rushing from one place to another, drinking coffee watching the goddamn birds singing, reading well into the afternoon - in a month, she’s read nine books already; she hasn’t read more than two in a year since she finished school.

She isn’t ready to leave, but she’ll go wherever Bellamy sends her. He was right about this place, so she’ll trust him again and she’ll go.

She can ride out the rest of this infamous drama somewhere near a beach maybe, where summer is approaching instead of getting further away. She can wait a few more weeks and then come back home to work on her album, to figure out where she wants to take it, to dive head first into her career again. She can focus on her music instead of wondering what it would have been like to kiss Lexa, to wake up next to her, to go skinny dipping in that waterfall they found, to hold her hand while they both read. 

_ Fuck _ .

She shouldn’t be even thinking about tying her heart to anyone when it's still bleeding from everything it went through, but she might be a little too late.

When Bellamy gets on the phone and pads away towards the kitchen in his socked feet - a testimony to how fucking long they’ve been at it - in search of food, Clarke goes to find Lexa. She convinces herself she needs to stretch her legs after having them tucked under her for so long and that some fresh air will do her good since her head has started pounding again, but her feet carry her straight to Lexa’s office without even considering going outside, to the kitchen or anywhere else.

Clarke rattles her knuckles against the door, cracking it open when she hears a muffled ‘ _ come in _ ’ from the other side. Her breath catches in her throat when she finds Lexa - oh, so much for keeping her goddamn cool. But, in her defense, Lexa put her hair up in a high ponytail, with curls falling over her shoulder as she goes over some papers, tortoise shell glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. Lexa in glasses - there’s only so much of that she can take before she turns into a babbling mess.

Lexa peels her eyes from whatever task she’s spent her afternoon in and looks up to meet Clarke’s gaze, a small smile flickering across her face, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Clarke says with a smile of her own, all the worrying she’s done until now locked away the moment she closes the door again.

Lexa settles her glasses on the desk - Clarke nearly asks her to put them back on - and makes her way around it, leaning her hips against it and crossing her arms over her chest, “How’s your reputation?”

"Tumbling down into the mud, but I trust Bellamy," Clarke sighs, rubs at her eyes as she closes the distance between them, stopping less than a foot away. She doesn't want this, she wants to know what's like to crash into Lexa's arms and feel her fingers sinking into her hair.

But Lexa wraps her arms tighter around her middle and Clarke wonders, not for the first time, if she's imagining the sparkle in Lexa's eyes when they meet, if she's simply projecting "Good."

Clarke tucks her thumbs inside the sleeves of her sweater, takes Lexa in, takes a step closer. She knows what Bellamy is doing on the phone and it’s not catching up with his girlfriend - he’s buying her tickets so she can fly halfway across the world on Thursday the latest, "I'm leaving for Asia before the end of the week."

"Oh?" 

If Lexa’s smile falls, Clarke tries not to get caught up in it. “No one knows me over there, so there's a good chance I can ride it out until I'm just a musician again and not-” Clarke forces herself to recall that one line that almost made her laugh at just how wrong they were, “uh, a whore turned lesbian after being dumped by the greatest action in Hollywood.” Lexa raises her eyebrow and Clarke shrugs, finding humor in it now, “Yeah, and that's one of the polite comments.”

Lexa nods, lifts her hand - slowly, as if she knew that a sudden movement could send Clarke flying back to those months she came all the way over here to forget about - and brushes a blonde strand of hair away, tucks it behind her ear. “If that's what's best for you.”

It makes Clarke smile - her hair wasn’t messy at all, there was no reason for Lexa to touch her hair other than wanting to.

Holding her breath, Clarke shuffles closer, her hands itching to hold onto the fabric of Lexa’s jacket, “Is there any chance you'd like a vacation in a sunny beach on a country we don't speak the language?”

“Are you- asking me to go with you?” Lexa sputters out, blinks her confusion away and Clarke realizes she’s close enough to feel the heat coming from Lexa’s body, to see her throat bobbing up and down when she swallows.

“Yes. You said it yourself that the hotel won't be busy again for a few months,” Clarke says in a reasonable voice, like she’s discussing business and not inviting Lexa to travel across the world with her. She sets her palms on Lexa’s hips, testing the waters, looking for any signs that tell her she shouldn’t, “Can't you take a couple of weeks off to go elephant trekking in Thailand?”

Instead of drawing away, Lexa holds her arms, tilts her head closer, “Would a vacation with a friend help you get back on your feet?”

Piling together all courage she has left in her, Clarke traces her fingers up Lexa’s side, across her collarbone, up her neck, down her jawline, whispering against her cheek, “I don't want you there as a friend.”

Lexa pulls lightly at her arms and Clarke feels herself tilting forward, her eyes falling closed, her mind barely registering the words Lexa says, “What do you want me as, then?”

Clarke doesn’t think, just closes the distance between them, because this might be the last chance she gets befo-

“Hey, have you-” the door flings open and Clarke hears Lexa muttering an almost angry ‘ _ Jesus _ ’ as they stumble away from each other, the moment gone as Raven steps into the room, looking dutifully sheepish, “Oh fuck, I, wow, sorry. It's just- Bellamy wants to fucking  _ brief _ me - his words - but I can't find him.”

“Kitchen. I’ll- go,” Clarke struggles to form words, to get her legs to move, to focus on leaving the office when Lexa is right there, standing dumbfounded beside her. With one last look at Lexa, one that says more than she could put into words, Clarke follows Raven outside.

Between getting Bellamy to stop treating Raven like a criminal under investigation and eating dinner - green bean casserole, meatloaf and cornbread, a combination straight from the Blake's childhood - all around the same table like a big loud family, the day turned into night and Clarke finds herself sitting outside, watching Octavia light up the fire pit they have in the garden as the sun sets in the horizon.

Clarke wraps a thick blanket tighter around her shoulders, not because she’s cold but because it’s too cozy not to, and accepts the big mason jar filled with cider that Bellamy brings her. She sips at it, lets it spread warmth within her, watches with a smile as Raven half jogs out the kitchen with a massive bag of marshmallows and yells at Lincoln to get her some sticks. 

For a moment, she feels at peace.

The turmoil of emotions she went through in a twelve hour span wore her down and she’s  _ exhausted _ , but Lincoln is pressing a kiss to Octavia’s temple and Raven is laughing at Bellamy trying to beat her at ‘chubby bunny’ and Lexa looks so good under the warm glow from the fire. Goodness, she looks so damn good.

Clarke tilts her head, all but pleading Lexa to come over without a word. But her message goes through. Everyone else is so busy enjoying themselves in a chilly night around a fire that they barely notice Lexa making her way towards her. Opening her blanket, Clarke makes just enough room for Lexa to sit beside her, their legs touching, their eyes reflecting the fire in the pit, the fire within them.

Taking a sip from her cider and shifting the jar from one hand to the other, Clarke carefully settles her palm on Lexa’s thigh, feels the muscles shift under her touch, looks up to meet green eyes. She’s about to say something - ask if Lexa wants some cider, or if it’d be too cheesy for her to go upstairs and grab her guitar; something simple and inconsequential, something to match the mood of the night - when a car shuffles past the field that overlooks the stables, almost coming out of thin air, and parks with the headlights turned on high beam, pointed directly at them.

And then, Finn Collins climbs out.

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of Clarke's trauma comes bubbling to the surface in this chapter, with Finn being at his worst. It was a pretty hard chapter for me to write, it was tough even to reread it before posting it. Be mindful when reading through it, and don't push if anything feels too much. I'll post a summary of this chapter at the beginning of the next one, in case you decide to skip this. Be safe.
> 
> Content warning for physical violence, homophobic slurs, emotional manipulation and abuse.

**PART NINE**

All day, Lexa has tried to stay out of the way.

After making sure Clarke was fast asleep in a drunken stupor and blissfully unaware of her world falling apart, Lexa called Bellamy again, knowing he’d probably be getting as much sleep as she would.

As she brewed a fresh pot of coffee at the brink of three am, she got scolded again - she had her share of blame and Bellamy was annoyed that his plans of keeping Clarke safe had gone south, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow - and didn’t argue when he said he’d be in the next flight to Colorado. This isn’t something Clarke can fix on her own and Lexa knows she’s not much help. 

Then, sitting cross legged in the middle of her bed with a steamy mug filled with coffee cupped in between her hands, Lexa watched as the news articles poured in.

Lexa sipped at her coffee, bitter enough to keep her awake without the caffeine, and read with bleary eyes and an uneasy heart how the tabloids depicted Clarke. With harsh words and more exclamation points than Lexa thought a serious news outlet should use, they labeled Clarke as an opportunist, a gold digger, a liar - anything but the kind hearted musician Lexa has gotten to know in the last few weeks, who’d giggle when a butterfly landed on her finger, who had befriended everyone in the hotel’s staff, who still managed to smile despite everything she had gone through.

As soon as the sun came up, Lexa made all the calls she could, personally cancelling reservations with her profound apologies, contacting her own lawyers to know what she should do, asking favors in to help secure the roads leading up to the hotel. She would block all roads and have every phone in the small town searched to pinpoint who leaked those pictures, but apparently that’s not something a hotel owner has any legal right to ask for.

All day, Lexa tried to give Clarke the space she needed to deal with it however she saw fit.

From what she had read, she had half expected Clarke to throw a tantrum and burn her hotel to the ground. Even thinking that about Clarke made her feel guilty. Lexa knew not to trust anything in the tabloids, knew better than to believe Clarke was the same person they painted her as. But all Clarke did was sit in her favorite reading nook, with her laptop in front of her and whatever drink Octavia managed to put in her hands - she didn’t drink much, didn’t eat at all, but Octavia would be damned if she didn’t try to avoid her brother’s yelling because Clarke hadn’t eaten.

By the time Bellamy arrived, Lexa was little more than a puddle of worry. She had read enough articles to realize anyone with a good sense of direction could tell where Clarke had been staying and it was only a matter of time before someone gave the name and phone number to her hotel. 

She wasn’t really worried about having her hotel flooded with fanatics and photographers, even though it’s not something she ever even thought about preparing for. She’s just worried about what Clarke would go through.

After spending a whole afternoon holed up in her office, her phone going off every time someone posted a new article about Clarke - she asked Anya to set up a Google Alert for her and the fact that she didn’t get mocked at all showed just how serious this whole situation was - Lexa feels like this day has dragged on for an entire week. It doesn’t even feel possible to have so much  _ shit _ packed up in less than twenty four hours.

Between pretending to go through her accounting books and convincing her heart it had no business being upset about Clarke leaving, Lexa is glad for the distraction when Raven came to get her to join everyone around the firepit for cider and roasted marshmallows.

Maybe it’s the warmth from the fire blowing away the cold fall breeze, maybe it’s the way Bellamy looks like he’s having the time of his life stuffing ten marshmallows in his mouth, but Lexa feels lighter than she did all day. There’s a quiet light within her and something lets her hope the world won’t end tonight.

When her eyes meet Clarke’s, the light within her turns into fire and she shuffles away from everyone else and towards a blanket burrito with Clarke’s face.

Lexa thinks back to this afternoon, to the way Clarke’s hair felt in between her fingers as she brushed it away, to the warmth of Clarke’s palms on her hips when she held her in place, to how her eyes fluttered closed and the butterflies in her stomach fluttered to life when Clarke traced her jaw. Lexa thinks back to the ghost of Clarke’s lips against hers, their breaths mingling together for the fraction of a second before they got interrupted.

Her heart tries to beat its way out of her chest just thinking about how ready she’d been to kiss Clarke.

Biting her lip to try and keep herself together, Lexa sits beside Clarke, much closer than she should, and tugs the blanket to cover them both. Neither says anything - the warmth from the fire and the soft glow it casts on everything it touches being more than words could muster. 

For a moment, they both seem to forget all the shit that is happening. For a moment, they’re just two girls sharing a quiet evening with their friends, just two girls tiptoeing around a first kiss that is bound to happen.

Lexa wants to take the cider from Clarke, wants to settle it by their feet, to wrap her hands around Clarke’s neck and tug at her until she can taste her lips.

All day, Lexa tried to stay out of the way.

Now she doesn’t want to anymore.

All day, Lexa spent her hours worrying about things she couldn’t change, but when the headlights hit them harsh and bright, the white light contrasting with the warm yellow fire, she doesn’t think twice before getting up and putting herself exactly on the way, keeping Clarke behind her, reaching back until she can feel Clarke’s hand on hers.

Finn walks out of the car with the devil in his eyes.

And Lexa knows that’s Finn Collins because every other article had a link to this interview or that video with him talking about how  _ hurtful _ it was to see the way someone he  _ cared so much about _ talk about him like that. He sure did a damn good job of painting himself as the victim in all this situation in this last month.

“You  _ bitch _ !” Finn yells as soon as he’s close enough, covering the distance between them in large strides, “You fucking  _ bitch _ .”

Lincoln springs to action before anyone snaps out of it, shouldering Finn and pushing him away. But there’s no stopping someone mad with rage - Lexa can see it from the distance that is quickly shortening, can see how he’s nearly foaming with anger built up over the weeks.

“Dude, what the fuck are you thinking?” Bellamy shouts back, jogging to him, pushing him harder until he stumbles back, “Do you even know what a restraining order is?”

“Like I give a fuck about that,” Finn spits, struggling to make it past Bellamy and Lincoln, his wide eyes locking on Clarke, “I’ll  _ end  _ you.” Lexa tugs Clarke closer behind her, like she can hide her from him altogether, and feels her hand shaking in hers, growing clammy with cold sweat, “Wait until I get my hands on you, you have no idea what I’ll do to you.”

In a moment, Octavia and Anya are beside Lexa, shielding Clarke with their bodies, offering one more wall for Finn to knock down before getting to her, while Raven grabs her phone - to either record it so they have proof or call the police so they can put Finn away, Lexa doesn’t know. 

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Bellamy grunts and pushes him again, making him lose his balance, stumble a few feet backwards, using the momentum to push him back, sputtering threats that are far from vague, but that Lexa can’t force herself to hear.

She turns around, squeezing Clarke’s hand before letting it go, trying not to let the way Clarke clings to her fuel her own growing rage towards Finn - it’s mixed with worry for Clarke and a sinking feeling she can’t name.

Lexa cups her cheeks, trying to get her frantic eyes to focus on her and not on the bastard behind her. “You’ll be okay, do you hear me? He’s not getting near you, you’ll be fine,” Lexa says in a voice that is as urgent as it’s comforting. She needs Clarke to know that, waits until she nods and lets go.

Something primal rattles deep within her bones to see Clarke reduced to this shivering shell of a woman, her eyes wide with fear that comes with experience, with knowing what’s waiting for her if Finn has it his way. But he won’t, not if Lexa has any say in this. 

Lexa has gotten to know Clarke in these last few weeks, away from anything the tabloids could tell her, away from her fame and what how it weighs down on her. Lexa has seen her strength, how she holds her head high despite everything that happened, how she still holds a deep love for life even after that asshole did what he did. Lexa has seen her grow, has seen her smile become a little wider each day, her eyes shine a little brighter. Lexa has fallen for her too hard to stand idly by as someone makes her fear for her own damn life like that.

Octavia wraps an arm around Clarke, either to comfort her or to help her stay on her feet, and Clarke flinches, lets a tear roll down her cheek and tugs at Lexa’s sweater. It takes everything Lexa has to grit her teeth and turn her back to Clarke, turn around to face Finn. 

“I won’t have that bitch talking shit about me,” Finn says to Bellamy before turning to Clarke again, “You’ll miss that broken rib when I get my hands on you again. Or do you think I came all the way here just to put another bruise on you?” They aren’t empty threats and Lexa can see it in his manic grin as she takes wide strides towards him.

“You need to leave.”

Her voice seems to give Finn pause as he peels his eyes from Clarke and searches her. He’s shorter than both Bellamy and Lincoln, although his behavior makes him look like he could take on the world. Every muscle in her is alight with a barely controlled anger, her closed fist being the only sign of it. Legally speaking, he’s trespassing her property, so yes, he does need to leave. But that’s not why Lexa will kick him until he gets back to California if that’s what it takes.

Finn scoffs, pushing Lincoln’s palm away from his chest as he looks at Clarke again, “Fuck, Clarke. How many girlfriends do you have?” Bellamy takes a step back as Finn starts to laugh, in a way that hardly resembles a mentally stable human being, “No wonder I had to beat you into behaving. I should’ve known you’re a fucking dyke-”

Pain shoots from her knuckles straight to her shoulder, a surge of adrenaline coursing through her entire body - that’s how Lexa registers that she had punched Finn.

She blinks and sees him stumble back, barely managing to stay on his feet, clasping his nose between his palms, bright red blood trickling to his lips. Before her brain can reason with her, before she fully understands that she’s probably out of bounds, Lexa lurches forward again, palms flat against his chest, pushing him to the ground before he has time to react.

“I said you need to  _ leave _ ,” she spits out as Finn scrambles back to his feet, tears running down his face still twisted in rage.

“You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” his voice is threatening, but it only adds to Lexa’s urge to break at least ten bones of his, “I hope that bitch is worth the lawsuit you’re gonna face.”

Hearing him talking about Clarke like that makes Lexa close her fist again, but she feels strong arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her backwards. She fights them, trying to wiggle herself free as she watches Lincoln and Bellamy towering over Finn, “ _ Leave _ !”

Bellamy says something to Finn but Lexa can’t hear it over the sound of her own blood pulsing in her veins. Whatever it is, it does get Finn to stumble back to his car. Lexa trashes against the arms clinging to her - she doesn’t quite want to hit him anymore now that he’s turning the engine on, but she doesn’t like being held back like she’s the insane one. She only stops when Anya whispers near her ear in an urgent tone, “Stop it! You’re scaring her.”

_ Clarke _ .

Lexa goes limp in Anya’s arms as they all watch the tail lights disappearing when Finn makes a right towards the main road. 

_ Fuck _ . 

Her fingers tremble as she wipes at her face, the adrenaline leaving her in one fell swoop. Her knuckles feel numb at the same time they hurt like hell, but she shakes it off, untangles herself - calmly - from Anya and looks back. All color has drained from Clarke’s face, her unblinking eyes hollowed from any emotion, and as Lexa drags her feet towards her, she feels the sting of regret piercing through her chest.

“I shouldn’t have done that-” Lexa starts an apology - not because she doesn’t feel like Finn deserved it, but because of how much it affected the one person she wanted to protect - but Clarke tumbles forward, wraps her arms around Lexa, rests her head on her shoulder.

Lexa holds Clarke close, an arm around her shoulders, her still trembling fingers sinking in her golden hair. She can feel Clarke’s heart hammering against her own chest, can feel her entire body quivering under her touch, but the relieved sigh against her neck makes Lexa feel just that much lighter.

  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Half of you were ready for Lexa to end Finn right there and then, the other half had a made case for Lexa's parents to end Finn in one fell swoop, and I _loved_ reading all the comments :') Oh, I absolutely adored the response for last chapter!! Thank you all so, so much for it!
> 
> For those of you who chose to skip last chapter, here goes the summary: Finn threatened Clarke, calling her names and not giving a damn about his restraining order. Raven got it all on video while everyone else shielded Clarke from Finn's rage. Lexa reassured Clarke, saying she'd be okay, and walks over to try and get Finn to leave, but he refuses and she ends up punching him. Anya has to stop her, saying she's scared Clarke, but when Lexa walks over to apologize, Clarke simply hugs her.

**PART TEN**

Slumping against the door frame, Clarke knocks on the door and sighs tiredly, feels everything that happened today weighing on her shoulders, fights a yawn.

She needs to sleep.

She needs a solid three day nap for her brain to process everything that happened in the last twenty four hours without  _ more _ things piling up on top of it all. She needs to curl up under a mountain of blankets, to pretend she’s still safe and sound hiding away out here and nothing can get her. She needs to believe that’s true for one more night.

When a muffled “ _ come in _ ” comes from inside the room, Clarke forgets for a moment how badly she needs her own bed right now and wills her heart to stay quiet. She shuffles the bag of frozen peas she stole from the kitchen until she can pry the door open, careful not to spill the tea she’s holding in her other hand. 

The sight that greets her almost makes her drop everything. This is Lexa’s bedroom and they had said goodnight a good half an hour ago, so it shouldn’t be a surprise as big as it is to find her ready for bed. But seeing Lexa in tortoise shell glasses and plaid pajama pants after watching her punch Finn does something to Clarke, the absurd contrast between the two situations setting alight a fire within her.

Lexa looks up at her from where she sits cross legged, the light from her laptop reflected on her glasses, and when she smiles, Clarke can swear she’s never seen someone so  _ soft _ .

“I brought you tea,” Clarke makes her way towards the bed as Lexa closes her laptop and pushes it aside, scoots to make room for Clarke to sit down beside her, reaching up for the steaming mug. “And frozen peas,” she adds, waving the bag awkwardly before sitting down, her leg just grazing Lexa’s.

Lexa sips gingerly at her tea, humming in approval as Clarke tugs a pillow towards her. “Thank you,” Lexa says, holding the mug with her left hand and setting her right one on top of the pillow so Clarke can cover her knuckles with the frozen peas. “How are you?” Lexa asks, her voice heavy with either sleep or tenderness;

“How am I? I should be asking  _ you  _ that.” Clarke teases, adjusting the bag on top of Lexa’s hand, fighting against the urge to hold it in hers, “You’re the one who punched a guy.”

Clarke looks up just in time to see Lexa’s throat bobbing up and down, her jaw clenching as she sets her mug on the nightstand. “About that,” Lexa starts, all serious and apologetic tone, barely forcing herself to look at Clarke. “I’m really sorry you had to see that, I- I shouldn’t have lost my head like that.”

“He deserved that. Believe me, he deserved that and a lot more,” Clarke feels more than hears her voice breaking, cracking at the edges, and forces herself to swallow past the lump in her throat. She knows Finn deserved that punch, but there’s a little voice inside her head whispering that all of this is her fault, that she brought it on herself, that she should have acted differently. Clarke knows whose voice it is, she’s heard it a million times before - usually right before a punch, but even without the blow, it takes her breath away from her. “I can’t believe he came all the way here, I’m- I’m sorry, Lex.”

“You don’t have to apologize for his behavior, Clarke,” Lexa whispers, her voice ringing more truthful than Clarke expected it to. It doesn’t sound - it doesn’t  _ feel  _ \- like she’s just saying that because it’s what Clarke needs to hear. It feels like Lexa genuinely believes that, “ _ None  _ of this is your fault.”

Clarke nods, not quite sure she can speak without tears following her words - it’s been a long day and she’s tired.

She pushes herself to believe in Lexa’s words, to believe that this really isn’t her fault. It’s not something that comes easy to her nowadays, believing in her own innocence, but Lexa is looking at her with warmth flooding her green eyes, the hint of a smile tilting her lips up.

Maybe she can believe in Lexa after all.

For now, Clarke settles for returning Lexa’s smile, pressing the frozen peas down on her knuckles, pretending she still has time to be alone with Lexa in the alternative universe that is this hotel, with its scented candles and beautiful garden, its library and precious people.

Clarke lifts the frozen peas for a moment, taking a look at the swollen knuckles, “May I check your hand?“

“It’s fine,” Lexa says, but nods, leaning closer to check her own hand, half grimacing when she sees the redness becoming a bluish purple, “I don’t think it’s much worse than bruised knuckles.”

Placing the bag on the bed, Clarke takes Lexa’s hand in hers. It’s warm, warmer than it should be, and the two first knuckles are swollen enough for Clarke to worry. “My mom is a doctor and she taught me a few things. I sort of know what I’m doing.”

Clarke feels for the bones of her ring and pinky fingers, finding them all in one piece. When she reaches for the middle finger, pressing to feel under the swelling, Lexa winces in pain. “Sort of? That’s comforting.”

It’s a joke, but Clarke feels the need to reassure her anyway. “I know how to check if it’s broken at least. Wiggle your fingers for me?” Lexa does it promptly and with enough movement that Clarke can be almost sure there are no broken bones. Unless she has a hairline fracture, but for that she’ll need an actual doctor, “When I was a child, I’d sneak out of the hospital’s day care and wander around, sit with the nurses or hang out with the radiologist.” Clarke adds to her story, either to distract Lexa or to distract herself, she can’t quite tell, “You can learn a lot if you’re a cute and curious little kid.”

“And you never thought of going to med school?” Lexa asks with more curiosity than Clarke expected, and she looks up, finds Lexa glaring at their joined hands.

“I’ve always known that wasn’t for me,” Clarke says, lowering her eyes as well. Lexa’s hand fits in hers, and if she runs her thumb over the swollen patch, Clarke tells herself she’s still looking for any fractures, even if the touch is too light for that. “But one day I ended up in a gallery, those above operation rooms for students to watch?” Clarke looks back up again, meeting Lexa’s eyes, and finds herself smiling at her own memory, “I threw up the moment I saw someone’s intestines lying on their chest. That’s when I knew for sure.”

Lexa snorts - she honestly snorts, the air trapped in her throat making her sound like the cutest pig Clarke has ever seen - and hides her face on her own shoulder for a moment, before looking back at Clarke. “Well… What’s the prognostic, doctor?”

Clarke knows she’s smiling a little too big, knows Lexa calling her  _ “doctor” _ made her stomach turn a little too wildly, but she can’t find it in her to care. She simply sets Lexa’s hand back down on the pillow, puts the frozen peas back on top of it, taps at it softly, “You’ll live. It’s not broken.”

For a moment, it feels like nothing has changed.

For a moment, it feels like they’re still hidden from the world in their own little corner and this is just one of many nights they spent talking without anything between them. It feels like Lexa is staying up for a little longer than usual just so she can spend a few more minutes with Clarke, it feels like Clarke is pushing past her walls to let Lexa in because she trusts her, because nothing can get them here.

For a moment, Clarke can swear she’ll bid Lexa goodbye and promise to meet her tomorrow morning for breakfast, even when they both know she won’t wake up in time. But they’ll have lunch together, they’ll talk about their mornings - Lexa will sulk about the amount of paperwork she has to get through before tax season, but will light up when Clarke tells she finished the book she recommended. 

For a moment, just a moment, she pretends this will last.

“I’m leaving tomorrow morning,” Clarke says, flatly. There’s no point dancing around this, no point avoiding it anymore. “With Bellamy. We’re going back to LA.”

It almost pains Clarke to see the way Lexa’s smile falls, her lips turning downwards, her brows joining closer in a frown, “You’re going back?”

“Yeah, I have to.” Clarke sighs, feeling the day’s events weighing down on her again. She hadn’t realized how light she felt beside Lexa until she felt almost unbearably heavy, “I need to deal with lawyers and the aftermath of those pictures and find a way to deal with Finn I guess.” She had to go back and face photographers and interviewers that were already calling in a frenzy, she had to go back and forget this little hotel in the middle of nowhere, “I don’t know, but Bel is losing his mind already.”

“What about Thailand?” There’s a little bit of hope in Lexa’s voice, but Clarke can tell that she’s reaching, that she knows the answer for that already.

Thailand sounds like a dream, all white sand and warm weather, and Clarke almost wants to throw another tantrum and take a plane halfway across the world, if only to forget about what waits for her back home for a little longer. Instead, she shrugs, “The whole point of that was to keep Finn from finding me. But, well.”

The damage is done now.

The plan was to keep her hidden, but Finn and the entire world know where she is, why she fled California, what fucking beer she was drinking when she kissed a girl in a shady bar. The damage is done and she has to deal with the consequences of it. 

It’s not that she’s  _ scared _ of what she’ll have to face. No, Clarke is past that. But she’s  _ tired _ \- tired of having to justify her own actions, tired of having to prove to everyone she’s allowed to have her own life. She knew this would be a big part of her life when she started in the music industry, but it doesn’t make her feel any less like a prisoner.

For the first time in years, she had felt free.

“But he did anyway,” Lexa’s trembling voice takes her out of her reverie. “Because I couldn’t keep you safe.”

She says those words so matter-of-factly that they take Clarke aback, leave her scrambling for something to say. Clarke scoots closer to Lexa, their thighs pressing fully together, blue eyes searching green ones. “Lexa, you know that’s not true.”

Lexa plays with the bag of frozen peas until it falls from her hand, swallows thickly, bites down on her lip. When her voice finally comes out, it’s drenched in apologies, “I should have stopped Raven and Anya when they came up with the idea, I should hav-”

“Stop. Lexa. Look at me.” Clarke grips Lexa’s cheek, tilting her head up until their eyes meet. Tear pool in her eyes, threatening to spill over and roll down with a single blink. “If it hadn’t been the scene at the bar, I’d have done something else. I was overdue for a scandal.”

Lexa shakes her head, as if she refuses to believe a word that Clarke says, “Still, I-”

Before Clarke realizes it, her lips are on Lexa’s - just for a moment, just to shut her up, just to keep her from apologizing from things she doesn’t have any responsibility for.

It’s over before she can tell what Lexa tastes like.

Clarke leans back ever so slightly, searching Lexa’s face for any hint of anger or disappointment or any emotion to give her some direction. She’s been flirting with Lexa since the day she got here, she’s been trying to find the perfect moment to kiss her for a least a couple of weeks now, but although Lexa flirts back, she never quite give in to a kiss.

So Clarke expects to find something that will send her running to her room, flying home to never look back. But she finds Lexa looking at her lips with half closed lids, her mouth hanging open just enough to be inviting, a hint of Clarke’s saliva still on the bottom lip. Lexa looks up, finds her eyes, stare into them with a hunger Clarke can only assume has been dormant until now, can only assume she woke up the beast with her kiss. 

The thought makes her smile, gives her enough courage to close the distance between them again.

Her lips fit perfectly against Lexa’s and her stomach does a complete turn the moment a tongue darts out to trace her bottom lip. Lexa deepens the kiss as her hand finds Clarke’s waist, tugging her close, even if their position is a bit awkward, even if it doesn’t allow for much movement.

It’s fine for now, it works perfectly for now.

Clarke follows, presses her body against Lexa’s as best as she can, lets her palm run up Lexa’s thigh, find her waist, bunch her pajama in her hand. Lexa hums her approval when Clarke tugs at the fine hair on her neck, changing the kiss, setting a different pace as they find each other’s rhythm.

She’s ached for this kiss for  _ weeks _ and it feels so good she’s going to cry. Lexa is soft under her palm and her lips move too gently against hers, like she’s afraid Clarke will break - she might,  _ good lord _ , she might.

Because she’s grown used to tough touches and kisses that tasted like iron.

Because she had forgotten what’s like to be held like this.

Because this feel like more than she deserves and everything she’s been craving for.

Because Lexa’s touch feels like balm for her broken self.

When Lexa breaks the kiss, it takes her a second to catch her breath. Clarke leans their foreheads together, feels Lexa’s ragged breath against her cheek and she doesn’t fight the smile that sneaks its way to her lips. She runs her tongue against her lip, biting down on it to keep herself from kissing Lexa again - she has a few things to say, but her entire body tingles with desire, with a hunger she forgot she’s able to feel.

Gripping at brown curls, Clarke breathes in deeply - everything is  _ Lexa _ , her minty breath, her body lotion, the smoke from the fire pit that stuck to her hair. “You kept me safe for longer than anyone else could even dream of,” her voice is barely more than a whisper, but Lexa is so close she doesn’t have to speak any louder, “And more than that, you- you gave me back that sense of safety I haven’t felt in too long.”

Clarke shivers when Lexa runs her hand up and down her back, “Clarke-” Lexa starts, her tone almost a warning - that they shouldn’t speak of such things, not when they’re putting half a country in between them in less than twelve hours.

But Clarke pushes on. “No, shush, let me speak,” she presses a kiss to Lexa’s lips because she can, because it’s proved to be an effective way of shutting her up, “Before coming here, I- I had lost a part of myself. It happened slowly, but he turned me into someone I didn’t recognize and  _ you _ ,” Clarke smiles, thinks back to how much she has changed since she got here without even realizing, “You helped me find myself again.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Lexa whispers as she shakes her head, still so close Clarke can feel her doing it. “You did all the work yourself, Clarke, you’re the only one who gets credit here.” 

_ Of course _ Lexa wouldn’t believe her.

“Damn right I did the work.” Lexa does have a point - Clarke remembers those first few days, the feeling of being trapped and how hard it was to even get up in the morning. But she remembers how it became easier each day, with each warm ‘good morning’, with each pointless trip to the town, with each afternoon spent reading together, “But let’s just say you made it all easier. And I’ll always be thankful for that.”

“Well-” Lexa starts, pauses almost mid word, nods as if she’s giving up on her line of thought. Clarke leans back so she can look at Lexa, search her face for what she meant to say. It’s a big step for her, opening up like this, and she can’t help the hint of insecurity she feels. But Lexa sighs and nods again, “You’re welcome, then.”

There’s more that she wants to say, there’s a lot more she wants Lexa to know. But for now, Clarke in content to just lean in, presses their lips together, feel the way Lexa’s breath catches in her throat when her teeth scrape her bottom lip. 

For now, it’s enough to fight the goose bumps as Lexa sneaks her hand up her sweater, touching the skin above her jeans with trembling fingers. 

For now, it’s enough to just feel Lexa against her.

Through the haze that comes with first kisses, first touches, first everything, they hear someone shouting something, somewhere down the hall. Lexa breaks the kiss, her tongue coming to swipe at her lip as she perks up to try and hear it. Clarke is almost too distracted by that to hear her own name being shouted loud enough to wake the dead.

“Is that Bellamy?” Lexa asks, knowing the answer since the voice is way too deep to be anyone else’s. But it’s a buffer that Clarke is thankful for.

Clarke nods in answer and almost grunts in disappointment as Lexa pulls her hands back to herself. Leaning back so she doesn’t make Lexa deaf, Clarke shouts, “ _ Coming! _ ” and turns back to Lexa, tucks a curl behind her ear, lets her hands fall to her lap as well, “I guess I should go.”

A nod is all the answer she gets, so Clarke shuffles up from the bed, runs her fingers through her hair, pulls down at her sweater. She wants to kiss Lexa good night, wants to keep kissing her forever, but she resigns herself to walking towards the door, to see what Bellamy needs her for, what she has to do before she collapses in bed.

Clarke barely makes it past the rug at the side of the bed before Lexa reaches for her wrist, tugs her back. She turns to find Lexa with a gentle but serious look in her eyes. “I’m here,” Lexa’s voice is strained, raw with emotion and Clarke feels her heart doing a loop and sitting snuggly close to her stomach, “I’ll be here if you ever need me, if you need to get away for a few days, if you want someone to talk to, if you need- anything.” Lexa looks like she’s at a loss for words, like she’s trying to convey too much in too poorly constructed sentences. Clarke can relate to the feeling. “I’m not going anywhere, I just need you to know that.”

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Clarke nods, blinks her tears away and squeezes Lexa’s wrist before they both let go, hopes that it’s enough to show everything she can’t say. “See you tomorrow?”

It’s a simple goodbye. It’s almost not enough. 

Clarke wants to ask if Lexa will be there to see her off tomorrow, to wish her good luck, to kiss her goodbye. She wants to tell Bellamy to deal with whatever it is that he needs her for, wants to ask Lexa if she can stay here tonight, if she can wrap her arms around her until she forgets the world, until they know everything there is to know about each other.

But it’s a simple goodbye and it’ll have to be enough.

“See you tomorrow.”


	11. Chapter 11

**PART ELEVEN**

Her phone goes off in her jacket pocket, a short sound that stops as soon as it begins and still startles her, and Lexa almost reaches for it before remembering where she is, what she’s doing and that it can wait ten minutes.

Plastering a slightly fake smile in her lips, she turns to greet the new guests dragging their luggage inside, taking in the hotel with wide eyes and dropped jaws. She lives for that look - the one people who come from a big city get whenever they see the forest transitioning effortlessly to a garden that comes to their front door.

Lexa watches as the husband places a hand on his wife’s waist, leaning in to tell her something that makes her laugh and look at him with amusement in her eyes. She has the “I’m so lucky I married you” look and that’s another one Lexa lives for. It warms her to have guests that are so happy together that they spread that happiness wherever they go, even if it stings a little to know she’ll probably never have that to herself.

But this isn’t the time for self pity and Lexa turns to her guests, greeting them as warmly as she can, asking how was their flight, if they found their way here easily.

Still, her phone feels heavier than it should in her pocket, demanding attention she can’t give it right now.

Lexa logs their information into the hotel system - they’ve switched from paper logs to a fancy software that is still new enough for her to have some trouble with it - and forces herself to focus on the task at hand instead of wondering what her phone could be showing her right now.

Because that sound is the one she has for the “ _ Clarke Griffin alert _ ”, as Anya likes to call it.

It has been weeks since Clarke left the hotel and went back to a life that would give Lexa a headache if she as much as thought about it for too long. It has been weeks since she punched Finn Collins, since Clarke kissed her, since she gave up on any excuses she was clinging to when it came to her feelings for Clarke. It has been weeks since they’ve said goodbye.

Lexa tells herself she’s still getting a notification every time a new article about Clarke gets posted only because she doesn’t know how to turn the Google Alert off - which isn’t exactly a lie, but it wouldn’t be that difficult to figure it out or to ask Anya to do it.

But it’s just true enough that she doesn’t feel guilty about it.

She shows the nice couple to their room, telling them about their gardens, the library they’re more than welcome to, the stables and how Raven will be happy to help them with a couple of horses so they can watch the sunset over the hill. They’re polite and easy to talk to. It doesn’t take much prompting for Lexa to find out this is their second honeymoon, to celebrate their ten year anniversary, and they have two boys waiting them at home, feisty eight and five year olds who are their life and cried when the nanny got there to spent the weekend with them. They thank her for everything and promise to bring their boys for a trip soon, and Lexa finds herself eager to meet the two little guys, tells them so.

It’s half an hour before Lexa drags her feet back to the reception and fishes her phone from her pocket.

And sure enough, there’s a notification waiting for her on her lockscreen.

She leans over the counter and swipes right, opening the new article. It’s something she knew about already - not because she’s  _ that  _ obsessed with Clarke’s life, but Raven had mentioned something about it. Lexa forces herself not to be bitter about Clarke texting Raven -  _ and _ Anya, and she wouldn’t doubt if she texted Octavia too - and focuses on the text instead.

Darting her eyes as she scrolls down, Lexa gathers that Clarke is said to be recording a new music video for a song she hasn’t released yet. Lexa knows the song because Clarke sent Raven and Anya a video of her singing it - they both told her something about snap peas? Spat cats? An app with a silly name that has silly masks for people to try on and Lexa doesn’t really care for any of it, but that video almost made her consider getting it.

But she didn’t, the same way she didn’t text Clarke first. She had gotten her phone number during the checking in and it just didn’t feel right, no matter how many times Anya had told her that Clarke would be thrilled to talk to her. Lexa settled for getting her updates from her friends, allowing her heart to flutter whenever one of them told her Clarke had asked about her.

There is a lot of speculation about what the song will sound like, what it’ll be about, what the music video will be and the article promises to follow up on it, but what catches Lexa’s eyes is the picture they used for the article. She had expected something from a prior music video, maybe the one where she has heart shaped sunglasses on and pineapples on her bikini, but it’s something else. 

It’s a candid picture of Clarke in a bomber jacket and sunglasses, crossing a busy street with her phone in one hand and a Starbucks cup in another. 

Lexa taps on it to open, zooms in on her face. She’s wearing lipstick and a smile, laughing at something on her phone, and Lexa feels something in her chest tightens. If she wishes Clarke had that face when texting  _ her _ , she doesn’t have the time to admit it before Anya bursts through the door.

“You’re gonna love me  _ so much _ ,” Anya says in lieu of a hello and Lexa narrows her eyes, studying the weirdly happy woman all but skipping towards her. Lexa has vivid memories of the last few times Anya said that exact same sentence to her - it always ended up with Lexa hating her friend for a good few days.

Lexa locks her phone and shoves it in her pocket. The last thing she needs is Anya seeing that she still has her Google Alert for Clarke, that she still checks them the moment she gets the notification, that she zooms into her pictures like a goddamn lovesick stalker.

Anya hops from one foot to another with a dumbly wide smile on her face and Lexa feels the fine hair on her neck stand up. It’s almost unsettling to see Anya grinning like that. “What have you done?”

“You know HFTP?” Anya says in a conspiratorial tone and Lexa nods. Everyone in the hospitality industry knows the association and has gone to at least one conference, which Anya usually loathes, so Lexa really can’t understand her sudden joy when talking about it. “They’re having their annual conference in Los Angeles this year and  _ you _ are going. Maybe, who knows, perhaps you could run into Clarke while you’re there.”

Oh.

There it is.

Yeah, that whole  _ love  _ Anya mentioned is quickly shifting to annoyance.

“That’s-” Lexa searches for the word that seems just out of her grasp with how idiotic this entire idea already sounds, “-stupidly lame.”

“I know!” Anya cheers and rounds the counter, opening the site for the convention. It’s something Lexa had been wanting to go whenever they hosted it closer to her, somewhere she could drive to, but hopping on a plane to fly several states to go after a girl with  _ that _ excuse to back her up? It definitely isn’t on her plans. “And you’re going.”

“No. I am not.” Lexa says in a stern voice, the tone of finality clear in it. 

But Anya is relentless. “Come on, Raven and I are going too,” Anya sounds more like a child trying to convince their parents of letting them go to a party with their friends than the stone cold hostess Lexa knows, “You can go to the finances talks, I think that guy with the weird haircut you like will give a lecture there.” Lexa tries to remember what guy Anya is talking about, but suspects she’s just throwing things out there, hoping something will stick, “Raven promised to take notes on the security ones, so she can update the guys when we come back. And I’ll enjoy the glorious open bar.”

Lexa stares at her, trying to remember why she likes the woman at all. She shakes her head and takes a few steps away, mentally mapping what she needs to do with her day and forgetting about this whole nonsense already, “No, Anya. This is non negotiable.”

“Well, and the tickets are non refundable,” Anya says in a nonchalant voice, leaning on her palm as she watches Anya circling the counter, “So you’ll be short of two and a half thousand dollars.”

Lexa stops. That gets her attention. “For a conference? For a  _ three day  _ conference?”

“Super worth it,” Anya says like it’s a no-brainer and Lexa has to curl her fingers into a fist not to yell at Anya and tell her this is all coming from her paycheck. “It goes from Wednesday to Friday, and Bellamy promised to take us out on Saturday, to see the city and whatnot.” She keeps going and has the nerve to smirk at Lexa before adding, “And by us, I mean Raven and I. We’re dropping you off at Clarke’s.”

“I really wish you’d stay out of my personal life.” Her voice is cold and even, her eyes piercing - it’s a goddamn warning and Anya would be wise to understand that. It annoys Lexa more than it amuses her, to see how adamant Anya is on getting her halfway across the country to see someone who she kissed once.

“Ugh, that speech might work with the new guys, but I’m your friend,” Anya is quick to roll her eyes at Lexa, not at all scared by her sharp eyes and sharper jawline. “And friends help friends when they’re being stubborn dumbasses.”

It all only manages to annoy Lexa further. “As much as I appreciate the name calling, I don’t need your help.” 

Because she  _ doesn’t _ . Lexa has her own goddamn hotel before she’s thirty years old, good friends - because they are, even when they make her want to rip her arm off just to have something to throw at them -, a personal library filled with more books than she knows what to do with. She lives among trees and flowers. She’s at peace with herself. There’s not much more she could ask for.

But, by the aggressive rolling of her eyes, the second in as many minutes, Anya disagrees. “Yeah, because you’re doing just fine and your love life is great,” her tone is mocking as she leans over the counter, crossing her arms in front of her.

“You’re one to talk.” Lexa bites back. She isn’t sure what’s happening between Raven and Anya, but she knows there’s  _ something _ there and she knows neither of them are moving a muscle to fix it. Anya uses her as an excuse, but Lexa wouldn’t mind them getting together. She likes them as a couple, Raven seems to do Anya more good than any of the girls she pick up heavens know where.

Anya simply scoffs and waves dismissively at her. Apparently, this isn’t about  _ her _ romantic issues. “You still have your Google Alert for her,” Anya points an accusatory finger at her and Lexa can’t find anything to rebuke it with, “You love her, Lexa, just admit it.”

“I don’t  _ love _ her.”

Because she  _ doesn’t _ . Lexa made sure to convince her heart of that.

“Fine, you  _ like  _ her.” Anya makes it sound like they’re in sixth grade and they’re still learning how to talk about feelings, but haven’t quite figured out how to not sound so mocking, “You have a  _ crush  _ on her.”

Lexa rolls her eyes hard enough for her to feel a string pulling at them. It seems like that’s how her conversations with Anya goes lately, with one of them always rolling their eyes at the other. “I bet a lot of people have a crush on Clarke Griffin. That’s not enough reason for them to quit their jobs for a week and go after her.”

Anya softens suddenly, tilts her head to the side, presses her lips to a line, like she’s deciding whether to say what she’s thinking or save it for some other time. In the end, she decides to go for it. “Come on, Lex. She was never  _ Clarke Griffin _ to you,” Anya reaches out to grab Lexa’s arm and it’s meant to be a comforting touch, but it burns. “It’s always been Clarke. Just Clarke.”

“So what if she has always been just Clarke to me? What good does that do?” Lexa yanks her arm out of Anya’s reach, clenches her jaw so tight her head starts pounding and her heart pounds along. She has managed to shove those words down her throat for weeks and she half wants to punch Anya for bringing them back up. “She’s not here anymore. She’s back to being Clarke Griffin and I don’t have any place in that life.”

“Maybe you should let her tell you that.”

  
  



	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoot, I'm sorry it took me so long to update! Things have been completely insane lately but everything is (almost) back to normal, so we should be back to weekly updates as well. I hope this makes up for the wait ;)

**PART TWELVE**

Taking a long swig from her water, now almost lukewarm and tasting stale, Clarke plops down on her chair.

She’s exhausted. Enough that she can’t even be bothered to grab another water bottle, enough that she will fall asleep right there in that folding chair, if she’s left alone for longer than five minutes, enough that she’s more on autopilot than anything else when she lets her shoulders sag and leans on her fist, her eyes closing on their own accord.

This isn’t Clarke’s first rodeo. 

As far as shooting a music video goes, getting everything done in two fourteen-hour days is the best case scenario. But it’s hour eleven in their second day and the minutes stretch menacingly before her.

Most of what they had planned for the video is already on tape. They’ve done all the outdoor scenes yesterday and even got some of the indoor ones before they all went home starving, possibly dehydrated and exhausted to the bones. Today was supposed to be a light day, all shooting packed under six hours.

But there seem to always be something that needs to be shot again, a scene that didn’t quite work like the director wanted -  _ let’s try that in a different light, from a different angle, without this or that prop _ . Clarke is pretty sure she’ll have nightmares about Murphy yelling at everyone for the next month.

“It’s the home stretch now, Clarke,” he had told her in a tone that was somewhere between comforting and demanding, like he understood how tired she was but she needed to get her shit together and pull her weight, “We just need to check the footage one more time, make sure we got everything we need.”

It’s not that she’s being ungrateful - even if it does look like that when she’s almost napping as crew members work around her to shift the entire set to Murphy’s liking. But she’s tired beyond words, can’t remember the last time she ate and the braids in her hair almost tug at her very brain until she can feel the tendrils of a headache clinging to it.

Her phone buzzes somewhere near her and Clarke peels her eyes open with much more effort than she’d admit. She’s almost grateful for the distraction - anything to keep her awake - and shuffles awkwardly out of the chair. 

In the past day and a half, Clarke has been in more outfits than she could count, but the one she has on feels particularly restraining. The leather corset pushes her breasts up and hugs her waist so tightly she can’t slouch, can barely breathe, and the skirt doesn’t do her any favors - her butt looks great it in, but it hikes up with every step she takes, so she had to resort to just shuffling everywhere. But what troubles her the most is the cape half draped, half tied over her hips that works like a damn cathedral train, trailing behind her for a few feet and while it does make her look regal in the video, it’s just a bother as she tries to make her way to her phone.

Clarke left it on the table where she grabbed her water, the table with a few forgotten trail mixes and stale coffee that people dare to call a  _ snackbar _ , and as she shuffles towards it, she lets herself long for the holed jeans and battered quilted jacket she wore most of the day yesterday.

Sighing more tiredly than before, Clarke wakes her phone up and reads the text from Bellamy:  _ dropping by with a surprise _ .

_ Make that surprise something from In-N-Out, _ she shoots back. She hasn’t eaten since this morning and she would be more than willing to kill for a burger if it came with extra spread. 

Clarke won’t be able to eat anything while she’s in this outfit, but it doesn’t keep her from daydreaming about their Animal Style fries until her mouth is watering. She leans against the table - standing up means less chances of falling asleep - and opens up a mindless game on her phone, just addictive enough to keep her entertained until someone call her back to shoot something else or Bellamy gets there.

Her mind drifts back to weeks ago, to the garden where she wrote the song she’s shooting the video for, to the cold breeze that didn’t feel harsh against her skin but welcomed her to bundle up and get a little bit cozier, to the way Octavia would shout from the kitchen window for her to come over and try a snack she had concocted - at least one of the Blake siblings hadn’t let her starve.

When Bellamy plucks her phone from her hands in lieu of a hello, Clarke can’t help her groan as she notices his empty hands. “No food?” She asks with a pout - one that has proven very efficient more than once, so she’s willing to give it a shot.

It doesn’t work, because Bellamy’s smile widens without a drop of guilt for leaving his best friend starving to death. “Nah, I brought something better,” he winks at her and Clarke rolls her eyes, letting him tug her forward and twist her around.

“I’m too weak from starvation to appreciate anything besides food,” Clarke whines, her tone so dramatic that she considers her chances in an acting career for a moment. Bellamy doesn’t answer, only gently pushes her cheek until she looks in the right direction. Clarke lets out a sharp breath, a smile tugging at her lips before she even processes everything, “Lexa?”

Clarke swears her stomach stops mid growling in pure surprise. There’s a part of her that wonders if she went so long without food that her brain is playing tricks on her, because Lexa is here. Lexa is standing in the middle of more cameras than she knows what to do with and an array of cords pool near her feet. Lexa is here and not in Colorado, reading a novel in the garden of her hotel that all but gets lost in the middle of the woods. Lexa is  _ here _ .

Before Clarke realizes it, her feet carry her towards Lexa. She wraps her arms around Lexa’s neck the moment she can grasp her, tugging her impossibly close, drowning in the sandalwood smell she didn’t realize she had missed until now.  For the first time that day, Clarke doesn’t care that her skirt hikes up or that the leather clings uncomfortably to her skin. All she cares about is Lexa pressed against her.

It takes Lexa a moment, but when she finally wraps her arms around her midsection, Clarke  _ melts _ .

They must be a strange sight to whoever looks at their direction. Lexa feels like home, but her boots and flannel shirt with rolled up sleeves look out of place in a set where everyone wears brand name clothing. And it doesn’t help that Clarke looks like a bride from a post-apocalypse world.

Clarke feels her cheek hurting before she realizes she’s been grinning ever since she first laid her eyes on Lexa. She doesn’t overthink it - she missed her friend, her technology impaired friend who won’t text her, who she hasn’t talked to in months. But there’s something in the way she steps back slightly when they part, still close enough to see every freckle in Lexa’s nose, and takes her in, like she’s committing Lexa to memory, like she’s afraid this moment will fade away if she blinks. 

Her hands linger on Lexa’s shoulders for a moment before she steps back completely, grin still firmly in place, “What are you doing in LA?”

“I- We came to a hospitality convention,” Lexa nods as she speaks, folding her hands on her back, and Clarke brushes away the little part of her that wishes Lexa had travelled all the way here just to see her, “Anya and Raven are here too, they stayed behind for the security talks.”

“Oh, fancy!” Clarke says with a chuckle. That sounds unbelievably boring, but Lexa seems like she can’t wait to get back to them and demand every detail.

“Yeah, they-” Lexa shifts her weight from one feet to another. Clarke looks at her intently, watching the words form in her lips, and realizes how much she missed her. “Um, they kind of forced me to call Bellamy and ask him to bring me here.”

“Wow! You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

Bellamy bursts into laughter and Clarke smiles wider as the way the tip of Lexa’s ears grow hot pink as she scrambles to explain herself, “No! No, no, I don’t mean it like that. I just mean that I wasn’t sure you’d want me to drop by uninvited.”

Clarke settles a hand on her arm and squeezes, chuckling out, “Don’t worry. I’m a big fan of surprises, and you’re the best one I’ve had in a good while.” Maybe that is crossing a line, but Clarke is too tired and too overjoyed to care, to worry about what it all means. “And you are almost better than a burger.”

Lexa frowns at her, “… What?”

“I’ll go get it,” Bellamy sighs, admitting defeat after Clarke bats her eyelashes at him. She’s starving, she’s definitely not above begging - and she wants a moment alone with Lexa, to soak up all the warmth she brings with her. Bellamy rolls his eyes and marches away, shouting back. “You’re  _ so _ annoying.”

“I haven’t eaten in so long I could swear I was hallucinating you,” Clarke says because why not - it’s flirty and it’s true. Lexa smiles, casts her eyes down to her shoes, and Clarke almost hugs her again. It’s always been so easy to flirt with Lexa, to make her blush with an offhanded compliment.

“I’m real,” Lexa looks back at her, her eyes glinting with something Clarke can’t put her finger on, but it makes her smile wider anyway, “I’m here.”

“You’re here,” Clarke repeats and the realization washes over her, blissfully warm and icy cold all at once. Because Lexa got in a plane and she’s  _ here _ , she’s living and breathing in the middle of a messy set, she’s not a dream that Clarke had. She’s real and she’s here. “God, I can’t believe you’re  _ here _ .”

Something in her tone surprises Lexa, because she raises her hand in a defensive gesture, her eyebrows quirked in worry, “That’s a good thing, right? I didn’t cross any lines?”

“Of course not! Why would you think that?” Clarke wraps her fingers around Lexa’s palm, squeezing it gently, tugging at it. She wants to intertwine their fingers, want to never let go, but she settles for drawing circles with her thumb on the back of it.

Lexa looks down at their joined hands, “We didn’t talk after you left.”

“Yeah, because you didn’t even text me,” Clarke says and if she sounds a bit hurt, neither woman comment on that.

Raven had gotten her phone while she was still in the hotel and would send her pictures from sunrises Clarke had been too sleepy to see and whatever horse she was tending that day, since that’s as close as Clarke would get from one. She had assumed Raven would give her phone number to Lexa after the third time Clarke had asked about her, but if she did, Lexa never texted her.

“You didn’t text me either.”

Clarke is the one to avert her eyes now, her a hot flash crawling up neck. She had had a deep fire burning within her, a longing she hadn’t expected. But she didn’t think it was her place to take that first step. “Touché. I didn’t think you’d know how to text.”

“I know how to use a phone,” Clarke looks up just in time to see Lexa rolling her eyes, her upturned lips the only thing that gives away her amusement, “I may live in the middle of nowhere, but civilization isn’t lost on us.”

“Okay. I’ll text you when you haven’t seen a building in a week,” Clarke promises, making a mental note to text Raven, to ask her for Lexa’s number, to text her pictures of buildings. It’s silly and she  _ knows _ it, Clarke is aware it’s something high schoolers would text when they ran out of ideas. Yet, she can’t help but wonder if Lexa will like it.

“Maybe more than a week. You forget the town over doesn’t have buildings either,” Lexa says, teasing back, and if feels so  _ easy _ \- Clarke could get used to this. 

“And you dare to say you know civilization,” Clarke rolls her eyes and takes a step closer. She’s mere inches away from Lexa but it still feels too far away. “When do you go back?”

“On Monday. The conference goes until Sunday, so we’re taking the plane back on Monday morning,” Lexa says in a low voice, almost a whisper. They’re close enough that they don’t need anything louder than that.

The whole set seems to quiet down as Clarke takes in the green of Lexa’s half closed eyes, the plumpness of her lips -  _ Jesus Christ _ , her lips - before averting her eyes back to her eyes. She could so easily get lost in them. “Plenty of time to catch up,” Clarke murmurs back, tilting forward.

“Clarke! Ready for you, girl!” Murphy yells from somewhere too close for Clarke to believe he really needed to shout that loudly, but it does the job he probably had in mind.

It spooks them both into parting. Lexa takes a full step backwards, her eyes wide open and her lips pursed together as she takes a deep breath, and Clarke lets go of her hand as the makeup artist comes towards them.

Clarke dutifully closes her eyes as she has the charcoal black paint reapplied to her eyes and temple until it blends in with her hair. Someone else comes to tend to her hair, spray something on it and brush any stray wisps away. By the time she has her entire face powdered one more time and her lipstick retouched, her new song is starting to play and Murphy is yelling orders again.

In between all the shouting, Clarke hears him telling this is the last scene they need and then they’re free to go home - and she almost  _ cries _ . She’s so tired she can’t wait to go home, climb into her bathtub and soak her hair until she can brush her fingers through it without crying, and then curl up in bed for a solid fourteen hours.

Besides all her exhaustion, she turns to Lexa, “Wait for me?”

Lexa nods, folds her hands behind her and walks a few steps until she’s behind the cameras. Clarke smiles at her - a bashful smile that is meant  _ just _ for Lexa - and marches towards her mark.

As soon as they’re ready to start filming, Clarke forces herself to forget about the pretty girl waiting for her,  _ watching _ her, and falls into the character they created. It’s an easy shot - Clarke walks past the double doors and down an aisle, until she kneels before an empty throne. It’s a somber scene, with the entire set falling into near darkness, decorated with warm colors leaning towards black, the only light coming from the candles scattered around it, but it’s one of Clarke’s favorite.

It mocks Hollywood and how it puts celebrities in a pedestal, alongside of gods that no one believes in anymore, worshipping them like they’re more than simple people trying to make it out alive. And it takes a jab at how destructive a relationship can be - that might not be as clear, but Clarke cherishes it anyway.

All the scenes she shot in this unbelievable outfit feel restraining and freeing all at once and she can’t wait to see it all put together.

The entire set bursts into applause once the lights come back on, a praise and a thank you for all the hard work they all put into this video over the last two days. Clarke lets herself soak that energy and claps along everyone, but she makes a beeline towards Lexa as soon as she can.

Her smile grows from a polite, thankful one to a wide grin that lights up her entire face when she gets to Lexa - her green eyes twinkling with something Clarke wants to call pride, her smile matching Clarke’s in intensity. Lexa has never seen Clarke in her element before, has never been a part of this world that Clarke fits so easily into, and to have her look this taken aback… Well, it feels better than any praise Clarke has ever gotten.

Before she can say anything to Lexa, before she can ask her what she thought about it, before she can pick up where they left, Bellamy shoves a cardboard container in her hands. The smell of fries is enough to make her stomach growl, betraying her when she tries to say it can wait. 

Bellamy shoos her to her dressing room, saying that there’s take out in the car and she can have it when they leave. It sounds a lot like the kind of bargain a mom would do with her two year old who decided to throw a temper tantrum in public, but Clarke is too hungry to argue and just shoves three fries in her mouth as she goes.

Clarke changes from her impossible dress back into her jeans and oversized shirt that she may or may not have slept in - she ties a knot around her waist and rolls her sleeves up, making it look marginally less like pajamas. Her makeup washes off easily, but she almost cries as she tries to untangle her hair from all the braids.

She gives up halfway through it and puts it all up in a messy bun, still eating the last few fries as she hurries back out.

She walks past Bellamy and Murphy without as much as a glance towards them, who are probably getting into the itty details of when the video will be ready, how long until they can take a look, and all that talk Clarke couldn’t care less about right now. 

All she sees is Lexa, her hands shoved in her pocket as she watches the crew taking the set apart.

Clarke settles her hand on Lexa’s elbow and she tells herself it’s so that she doesn’t startle her, but it’s something more, she knows it’s something more. “Do you want to go grab something to eat?” She thinks about Lexa in a diner they have a few blocks down, with Los Angeles lights shining behind her, and her stomach takes a loop. “We should catch up.”

Trying to sound light and breezy doesn’t work, not when she has a image of Lexa smiling under blue and pink neon lights is etched in her mind.

Lexa seems to sense that, or sense something else, because she shifts from one foot to another before taking her hands out of her pockets, wiping her palms on her thighs and breathing in deeply -  _ oh no _ . 

“Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to have dinner with me.”

Clarke stares at her for a moment, puzzled at her words, at the way Lexa holds herself too tall, her tone too serious. Then Clarke smirks, playfully, “That’s kinda what I just said.”

“No. I mean it as a-” Lexa sighs, searching the words she needs, “I want to take you out on a date.”

Clarke smile falls. “Oh?”

Before she finds a way to explain, Lexa is already taking a step back, putting a distance in between them that she might think Clarke needs - she doesn’t, but she’s rooted into place, her mind going uselessly blank, her mouth going dangerously dry.

“Is this unexpected? Unwanted?” Lexa offers and Clarke can see her throat bobbing up and down, worry clouding her face.

“No, Lexa,” Clarke snaps out of it, taking a step forwards to get close to Lexa again, “I flirted with you pretty much from the moment I got to your hotel, I want this. But-”

“There’s a  _ but _ .”

There is a  _ but  _ \- a big one, a  _ but  _ that Clarke wants to ignore, one that she knows she can’t.

“It’s not a bad thing,” she begins, her hand settling on Lexa’s arm, “It’s just that things are different for me here in LA. It’s one thing to get take out with a friend, it’s different to go on a date.” For a moment, Clarke wishes she really could take Lexa out to a candlelit restaurant where they’re eat without any worries, take her for a walk where they could hold hands without wondering how the tabloids would frame it,  “What happened with Raven-”

“-would happen with me,” Lexa interrupts and she understands, Clarke knows she does.

“Maybe. Probably.”  _ Definitely _ , Clarke muses, the last few weeks worth of news playing in her mind. Ever since her break up and her ‘ _ disappearance _ ’, as people like to put it, her every move has been in one gossip website or another. “And I know you’re a private person. I couldn’t ask you to be okay with having people barging into your life like that, photographers following you down the street, reporters coming up with wild theories about you. It wouldn’t be fair.”

Lexa stays quiet.

Her green eyes search for something in Clarke’s face, but she stays quiet.

It’s all Clarke can do to hope her face doesn’t betray her - she knows she had to tell Lexa about it, at least warn her somehow, but she can’t help the sinking feeling in her stomach, like she’s swallowed an anchor and it’s threatening to drag her to the bottom of the ocean.

It’s one thing to date someone who’s already in the business, who knows how to handle having their lives turned inside out by people who they’ve never met, who understands what it takes to have even a little privacy. It’s another thing to drag Lexa into all this.

But even if she knows it’s the right thing to do, Clarke allows herself to try one more thing. Because she can’t remember ever feeling so light beside someone, can’t remember the last time she felt like she had finally found a home.

“We could-” she begins and Lexa’s eyes widen ever so slightly, as if she too had been hoping to find another way, “Let’s have dinner at my place instead. See how things go before you decide if it’s worth it to get into all this mess.”

_ If  _ we _ are worth it. _

Lexa nods and her lips quirk up in a hopeful smile, “You don’t mind?”

“I don’t if you don’t.”

“Tell me the address then,” Lexa says and Clarke doesn’t have to be told twice. She jogs quickly towards a camera guy who was in charge of putting post its reminding everyone of their marks and asks to borrow a pen. Clarke scribbles her address on the little pad he hands to her and adds her phone number under it, with a winky face drawn beside it.

Folding it before walking back to Lexa, Clarke takes a deep breath.

There’s one more thing she wants to do.

She stops less than a foot away from Lexa, shuffling forwards as she places the folded note on Lexa’s hand. Her voice is little more than a whisper when she speaks, her heart hammering against her ribcage, “Is it okay if I kiss you now or do I have to wait until our date?”

Lexa glances at her mouth as Clarke wets her lips, “Well, we’ve kissed before, so.”

“Oh, you’re very romantic.”

Rolling her eyes, Lexa smiles as Clarke inches closer. “You don’t have to ask, that’s my point,” Lexa whispers against her lips before capturing them in a gentle, tentative kiss.

In that moment, Clarke swears she will fight every last paparazzi in Los Angeles if it means she gets to have Lexa.

  
  



	13. Chapter 13

**PART THIRTEEN**

Shuffling the flower bouquet on her arm until she can have a firm grip on the bottle of wine she brought, Lexa raises her free hand and rattles her knuckles on the door.

She hopes it’s the right one.

Her nerves are getting the best of her and she might as well be in a whole different floor than the one she’s supposed to be. But no, the number on the door says she has the right door and since this is the one apartment that doesn’t have a welcome mat, Lexa is pretty sure this is it.

There’s shuffling behind the door and Lexa wills her heart to quiet down, to stop beating so out of rhythm and fall back to something akin to normal, but she’s helpless when the door opens.

Clarke looks breathtaking. 

It’s hard for Clarke to look bad, Lexa muses, even when she’s wearing mismatched pajamas and hasn’t brushed her hair yet. But Lexa has to force air into her lungs as she takes Clarke in, her high heels with straps around her ankle, the peter pan collar of her dress that falls mid thigh, her smile that widens as she realizes who’s at the door.

When Clarke reaches for her neck and brings her closer for a kiss, Lexa loses all hopes of ever getting her heartbeat back to normal.

It’s an overload of sensations to have Clarke pressed so close to her without much warning, to feel her plump lips brushing gently against hers, the tip of her tongue peeking out just enough for Lexa’s legs to threaten to buckle from under her, to feel how warm Clarke entire body feels under her palm. 

Clarke peels away from her and Lexa follows her for a moment before realizing she broke the kiss and pulling back herself, trying to blink away the haze clouding her thoughts.

“Hi,” Clarke says, her slightly croaked voice the only indication she’s affected by the kiss, and steps aside, opening the door wider, “Come in! Take out just got here.”

Forcing her feet to move and take her inside, Lexa waits for Clarke to close the door before she offers her the flowers, “These are for you. And this-” Lexa lifts the wine, finding herself still dazed from the kiss, “-needs to breathe for a little while.”

Clarke takes the flowers, cradling them on her arm. It’s a simple bouquet - soft pink roses and white lilies surrounded by wax flowers and eucalyptus leaves, wrapped in craft paper with twine keeping it all in place. Lexa had chosen the flowers herself and finished the bouquet in her hotel room, with Raven and Anya pestering her about how  _ soft _ she is. But the look of pure wonder in Clarke’s face made all the teasing worth it.

“Thank you,” she breathes out, like the gesture took her completely aback. And it might have - between the abusive relationship she’s been in and the one night stands she had told Lexa about, Clarke must have gotten more flowers from fans than from someone who wants to to put that kind of smile on her face, “They’re beautiful, Lex. I’ll put them in some water.”

Following Clarke further into the apartment and towards the kitchen, Lexa forgets to look around and take in her surroundings and focuses on watching Clarke smelling the flowers and smiling softly every step of the way, until she finds a vase for them. Lexa could get used to this.

Clarke pulls out a small decanter along with the vase and hands it to Lexa, pointing her towards the drawer where she keeps the corkscrew. Lexa rummages through ladders and wooden spoons to get to the corkscrew and sets on opening the wine as Clarke unwraps the flowers and arranges them in the vase.

This is a first date, but it doesn’t feel like it.

They had gotten to know each other already and had breezed past any awkwardness that could come with it - because they were getting to know each other as friends and things are easier, lighter when you don’t have any second intentions. Lexa knows where Clarke grew up and what embarrassing music she listened to in her teens, knows what makes her laugh so hard she snorts and what she’s passionate about. And Clarke knows all the same, knows that she’s a morning person and what books she likes to read on rainy afternoons, knows her more than Lexa would like to admit.

So this might be their first date, but it feels like they’ve done this a million times before.

Becoming comfortable with each other is the one step of dating that Lexa has always dreaded, but they’re already there and all that dread gives way to a warm familiarity. Clarke talks about the music video as she finishes arranging the flowers and asks Lexa about the hotel as she scoops all the take out the got - enough Italian food to feed a small army, Lexa notes and Clarke laughs, because it’s true - into proper bowls before setting the table.

Lexa has two glasses of wine on her hands as Clarke brushes past her to set the vase on the table, pausing to press a kiss to her lips before going back to pick up the wine, like it’s something they do all the time, like it doesn’t make Lexa feel drunk before she even tasted the wine.

“We have Italian salad, rosemary bread, Neapolitan pizza, chicken piccata and pasta aglio olio with broccoli,” Clarke says, pointing to the several dishes on the table as they take their seats. “I think it’s enough for like six people?” Clarke whispers, more to herself than to Lexa, the tips of her ears growing slightly pinkish. “I got their family meal.”

Taking a sip from her wine and willing it to make her bolder, Lexa reaches over to wrap her hand over Clarke’s, squeezing it gently, “Next time we can order this for lunch and have enough for dinner.”

Clarke seems to light up at the idea of a  _ next time _ . “I like the way you think,” she chuckles through her words and drinks her wine before setting it aside, “Well. Shall we dive in?”

And they do dive in, grabbing a little of everything and passing bowls back and forth in a dance that seems almost muscle memory. Clarke talks about the restaurant she ordered this from and how they have picnic box combos as well - they should try it out sometime, maybe at a private beach Clarke can get for them, maybe in the spring when the days are longer and the sunsets prettier. Lexa agrees, because it does sound like a lovely idea, and promises to take her to the woods near the hotel in the summer, so they can watch everything turning to gold as the sun goes down.

Between slices of bread drizzled with olive oil and sharing secrets peppered with laughter, they make plans for the future without ever questioning if there will be a future for them.

As Clarke puts away the leftover that are enough to feed her for the next couple of days, Lexa carries the dishes to the sink, feeling the lightness that comes with a third glass of wine and a pretty girl smiling all through dinner because she’s just  _ that _ happy. Lexa feels like she could float away with the breeze and she realizes with a twist in her chest that she hasn’t felt like this in years.

“I still don’t understand why you don’t have a dog. You have the space, you have the people to care for it,” Clarke says as she scoops pasta into a container, pressing the lid on as she tries to reason with Lexa. Then her head shoots up, her eyes wide in comical fear, “Do you hate dogs? Tell me now so we can break this off before it get serious. I’d hate to have to divorce your ass when I want to adopt a dog and you say you hate them.”

Lexa chuckles at that, trying her hardest to keep her stomach from fluttering at the idea of marrying Clarke, adopting a dog with her, choosing a name for the pup and falling asleep with it snuggled in between them. “No! Not at all. I love dogs,” she says, taking the empty bowls Clarke gives her, “I just- I don’t know, it’s tricky, What if a guest is scared of dogs?”

“You have  _ horses _ ,” Clarke teases, as if having horses and not having dogs is more than she can handle.

“True, but they stay at the stables,” Lexa says over her shoulder, piling all the dishes in the sink and tucking the cutlery to the side. It feels almost domestic, to be doing the dishes while talking about dogs. “It’s harder to keep a dog out of people’s way and I don’t want to leave my dog in a leash with all that space to explore.”

Clarke brings over the last of the bowls, setting them in the sink as she bumps her hip against Lexa, and it all feels so damn domestic Lexa almost wants to cry. Because she never had this. She had a girlfriend back in college that would make her noodles in a microwave and read beside her as she studied, but it was never like this. It was never this comfortable, this  _ right _ .

“Get a chill breed then. Like… Oh, a boxer! Come on, no one can hate a boxer.” Clarke says with so much enthusiasm that Lexa considers getting a boxer for a moment - maybe she could train the pup to stay in the back and add a ‘are you okay with dogs?’ question when people check in. She opens the tap and lets water fall over the dishes, but Clarke closes it, “What are you doing?”

Lexa blinks and looks at her, “I’m going to do the dishes.”

“Oh, please. You are  _ not _ .”

“Clarke,” Lexa says pointedly as Clarke tugs at her hand and drags away from the sink. It’s a simple touch and it shouldn’t do more than amuse Lexa, but she feels a buzzing where her skin meets Clarke’s. She forces herself to finish her thought, “I asked you out and you treated me to dinner. The least I can do it help with the dishes.”

“No, what you can do is get your ass on my couch,” Clarke orders, with a finger pointing to the living room and Lexa smiles at her, like she’s been doing ever since she walked in - it’s like she gets to know different versions of Clarke at the hotel, at a shooting, at her own home. This playful one might be her favorite, “It’s not like I cooked you a buffet, I just ordered it in.”

“Still.” Lexa presses once more, but she’s considering herself defeated already and Clarke’s raised eyebrows tell her the same, “Okay, but next time I’m cooking.”

Clarke drags her along as she walks towards the couch, her hand still wrapped around Lexa’s as she teases, “Can you actually cook? Or are you gonna ask Octavia to make something?”

“Hey, I’m a very good cook,” Lexa rebukes, but the aggravation in her tone is shadowed by the grin on her face. Before she can overthink it, Lexa intertwines her fingers with Clarke’s, letting herself be dragged past the dining table, “I don’t cook much because well, truly, Octavia doesn’t let me, but people who had tasted my food say I have a good hand for it.”

“Oh yeah?” Clarke glances at her, eyebrow raised in a way that makes Lexa tingle from head to toe - oh, she’s doomed. “What else are those hands good for?”

Lexa snorts at Clarke’s  _ awful _ line that somehow manages to be both funny and incredibly lame.

But it works.

Tugging at their joined hands until Clarke pauses and turns to her, Lexa feels the laughter dying down in her throat - it’s not funny now, the way Clarke parts her lips ever so slightly, her eyes darting between Lexa’s, falling to her mouth and back to her eyes again. Lexa takes a step closer, all but pressing their bodies together, and leans in.

Lexa feels the kiss everywhere.

She feels it on her lips, when Clarke parts them with her tongue and deepens the kiss, sighing softly into it; on the small of her back with the warmth from Clarke’s hand seeping through her shirt as she pulls her closer; on their joined hands, the gentle electricity still coursing through her, telling her this is where she’s meant to be; in her heart, her treacherous heart that skips a beat every time Clarke swirls her tongue against hers, breathes heavily against her cheek.

She’s intoxicated with Clarke, overwhelmed by the feel of her, drunk with her taste. 

Lexa can’t tell where she ends and Clarke begins - and she realizes that she doesn’t want to.

Breaking the kiss, Lexa needs a moment to gather her thoughts and put into words everything her heart is telling her. She strokes odd patterns with her thumb on Clarke’s cheek, tilting her head up until their eyes meet. “I want this. I don’t care what it takes, I want this.”

“Lexa,” she breathes out and Lexa shivers, steps closer, seeking Clarke’s warmth. “You know it won’t be like this all the time.” Clarke says in a whisper, like anything louder than that will break their bubble. ”People will start rumors and make up stories about you. They’ll barge into your life, wanting to know every last detail of it.”

“I’m a pretty boring person, they’ll give up soon enough.” Clarke is giving her an out, has been giving her every possible opportunity to give up on them ever since she asked her out. But Lexa doesn’t want the easy way out.

“It won’t be easy. I need to be in LA for recording and promos and shoots. When I’m not here, I’m either on tour or flying places for interviews,” she goes on, listing all the reasons why Lexa should nod politely and walk out the door. But Clarke tightens her grip on Lexa’s hand, her thumb drawing circles on the back, her fingers wiggling in between hers.

“I want this. I want you,” Lexa repeats herself. She’ll say those words again and again, until Clarke understands them, believes in them. “If you don’t want the same, I’ll walk away. But celebrities make it work every day and so can we.” She breathes out, blinking back stubborn tears as she waits for Clarke to say that no, she doesn’t want the same. But it never comes. “I won’t ask you to give up your life for us to be together, I just need you-” Lexa feels her bottom lip trembling as she forces the words out, because Clarke needs to hear them, “I just need you to be mine.”

Clarke kisses her and it tastes like all the words they’re not ready to say yet, it tastes like a future built together and the certainty that they’ll make it work.

“Then I’m yours.”

  
  



	14. Chapter 14

**PART FOURTEEN**

Closing the door behind her to keep her band members from dragging her out again, Clarke closes her eyes, rests her head on the door as she hears laughter echoing down the hall from her hotel room, and she doesn’t fight the giggle that ripples through her entire body.

Her cheeks hurt from smiling too wide, from laughing too loud.

It’s been happening more and more the last couple of months and Clarke can almost feel the broken pieces inside of her coming together again, healing at an excruciatingly slow pace, but healing nonetheless. Her heart is full of joy and happiness and she’s so goddamn thankful for what her life has been like lately that she could crumble into tears.

Things seem to have fallen into place ever since a certain someone, with soft forest green eyes and curly brown hair that looks unbelievably good first thing in the morning, came into her life. It’s as simple as that.

The only thing missing from this moment is Lexa wrapping her arm around her and kissing her neck in a lazy way that drives her up the wall. But Lexa is all the way back in Colorado, running her hotel among flowers and greenery, and Clarke is in London, trying to quiet her heart enough for her to get changed and get into bed.

She peels herself from the door and heads over to the bathroom, kicking her shoes off and leaving a trail of clothes on the floor as she goes. Clarke is so exhausted - five concerts in five nights in five different cities will drain life right outta you - that she could curl up in the bathtub and fall asleep right then and there.

But she forces herself to shower, to scrub all the glitter out of her body and wash her hair with enough shampoo to leave it squeaky clean and free from the whole can of hairspray in it. The warm water is enough to relax her muscles, sore from jumping up and down all across the stage and trying to do a cartwheel on a dare, and Clarke feels sleep pulling at her when she finally steps out of the shower.

Digging for pajamas only half awake, Clarke stumbles towards her bed. It’s a cozy monstrosity, with enough pillows to drown her and blankets so fluffy they could be easily mistaken by clouds. It’s a far cry from the hotel she holed up after her break up, but she’d trade beds in the blink of an eye.

She looks at the alarm clock, the red numbers glowing at her, and lets out a yawn so hardcore she has tears in her eyes. It’s four in the morning and she should fall asleep the moment her head hits the mountain of pillows, but she has other plans - it’s only nine in the evening back in Colorado and Lexa should be getting ready for bed as well, being the grandma she is.

Somehow, Clarke can’t seem fall asleep without hearing Lexa’s voice anymore.

She draws the covers back and plops herself in the middle of the bed, making herself comfortable under the thick blankets as she dials her girlfriend’s number. She could have very well scrolled down her contacts list and called her from there, but there’s something old timey about actually dialing her number from memory that makes Clarke feel closer to Lexa.

Ugh, Lexa has turned her into a softie.

And what scares Clarke the most is that she enjoys being this cheesy girlfriend who sends good morning texts and needs to hear Lexa’s voice every two hours or risk feeling like she’ll collapse. What scares her the most is that it doesn’t scare her at all.

Lexa picks up halfway through the second ring, “Hi.” Her voice is sleepy enough to tell Clarke she has been ready for bed for a good half hour, wrapped up in blankets and doing some reading before calling it a night. The thought alone makes Clarke smile.

“Hey, babe,” Clarke draws her vowels, snuggling further into her pillows. She’s taken to calling Lexa  _ ‘babe’ _ in their calls every now and then, trying it out - it feels good in her tongue, the way it rolls out without any effort, how right it tastes. 

“ _ Hey _ ,” Lexa says again, in a tone that tells Clarke she’s smiling. Lexa hardly looks like one for pet names, but she smiled so damn wide when Clarke called her  _ babe _ in a video call that it’s safe to say she approves of it, “ _ Shouldn’t you be asleep? It’s, what, three in the morning there? _ ”

Her voice is warm and  _ safe _ , enough for Clarke to want to close her eyes and pretend she’s not alone in a hotel bed with an entire ocean in between them. It sounds like a lullaby and Clarke can’t wait to fall asleep with Lexa murmuring against her skin, “Almost four, but I just got to the hotel.” 

“ _ Concert went on until late? _ ” The way Lexa forgets to speak up half the sentence makes Clarke wonder if her voice has the same effect on her.

“We had a meet and greet after it and I got too excited talking to them about my new songs,” Clarke smiles, because her fans already know the handful of new songs by heart, even if they’ve been out for a week. “I played them the one I showed you in our last video call, the one about finding love where you least expect it.”

She hears shuffling on the other side of the line, as if Lexa is burrowing further down into her covers. “ _ Oh, I like that one _ ,” Lexa sighs contently, and Clarke feels her heart skipping a beat to do a somersault in her chest. Oh, boy, is she in love.

Clarke chuckles as she closes her eyes, “Of course you do, it’s about you.”

It’s been little over a month since Lexa visited Clarke in Los Angeles, little over a month since they decided to try and be in a relationship when they both knew the odds were against them. It’s been a month and Clarke knows they’ll beat them all.

Lexa had gone back home before Clarke could fully enjoy her, before she could map every inch of her, before she could commit every freckle to memory. But they’re making it work with texting all through the day and constant calls - Anya texted her saying Lexa’s phone has become an extension of her arm and that’s as amusing as it is frightening. They’re saving their kisses and nights spent wrapped around each other, making up for it with long talks and falling asleep with their video calls still going.

For the first time, Clarke feels like a normal person.

_ Lexa _ makes her feel like she’s just a girl trying to make it through her days until she can be with her girlfriend again. Whenever she’s with Lexa, she forgets that her personal life is a cover story more often than not, that her face will be on billboards soon, that thousands of people want to meet her every day.

With Lexa, she’s just someone who’s head over heels in love with someone who loves her back.

There’s a lull in their conversation after Lexa hums amusedly at her. Lexa knows very well that song is about her, and she knows Clarke loves her even if they have never exchanged the actual words - Clarke does it through her music, Lexa does it through her actions.

“Are you asleep?” Clarke asks in a sleepy voice herself, after hearing Lexa’s breathing evening out through the receiver. Their night calls usually go like this - soft words and long silences, murmured promises and listening to each other falling asleep.

Lexa hums as she shifts in bed again and Clarke can almost imagine her putting her phone on the pillow beside hers, a few minutes away from falling asleep, “ _ Almost _ .”

Clarke could let this be it.

She could turn the lights off, turn to her side and cuddle a pillow too cold for her to pretend it’s Lexa, settle her phone on speaker and fall asleep listening to the sound of her girlfriend’s breathing. She could do it, she  _ should _ do it because tomorrow is Monday and it’s  _ her  _ day off and she can sleep in to her heart’s content, but Lexa has a five am wake up call as always.

Clarke really should let this be it for tonight, but an idea grips at her. She settles on her back, a smile creeping up on her before she has the good sense to tone it down - she has to give it a try. “So,” Clarke drags the word in a suggestive way, her hand sneaking under her shirt and spreading over her stomach before she fully realizes it, “What you wearing?”

“ _ What? _ ” Lexa asks in a shriek, sounding more alert than she did since they started the call. It takes her a moment to realize what that grossly cliche question means and it amuses Clarke to no end when she hears Lexa grunting, “ _ No. We’re not doing that. _ ”

“What, why?” Clarke whines, because she misses her girlfriend and the late hour had stripped her from any reservation.

Lexa sighs, “ _ I’m not having phone sex with you before we do it in person. _ ”

It’s not like they haven’t done  _ anything _ in person - Lexa complained about a hickey on her stomach for a solid week, but Clarke knows it was half hearted at best because she always smiled when she showed the fading bruise to her.

They had been together for only a day and a half after their date, after they decided to give them a shot, and while they had spent nearly every moment together, they never even got to take their shirts off. And goodness, long make out sessions leading nowhere will do nothing but make things worse when it came to sexual tension.

It had been a silent agreement between the two of them to wait, to let things take their own course, to get to know each other before anything happened. Because Lexa hasn’t had anyone in her bed since college and she built walls around herself that aren’t easy to knock down. Because Clarke had left an abusive relationship less than three months ago and she’s healing, therapy helps and surrounding herself with positive people too, but it’s a process that she’s not nearly at the end of yet. 

So they had made out on the couch - and in bed and against the kitchen island and at the hotel lobby and at the airport, that’s not the point - and pulled apart, chest heaving and pupils blown, before things got past the point of no return. 

And now Clarke is halfway across the globe.

But Lexa does have a point - Clarke wants the first time she hears Lexa gasping her name to be in person, not over the phone. It doesn’t keep her from sulking. “Does that mean next time we’re apart we get to have phone sex?”

“ _ Clarke _ ,” Lexa snorts a laughter, but Clarke did get her to start using Snapchat and stop calling it  _ snapshot _ , so she does have high hopes of getting Lexa to eventually agree to phone sex.

“Fine,” Clarke grunts half heartedly, shifting under the covers and pulling her shirt back down, “I guess I’ll have to wait until we hang up then.”

“ _ Uh _ ,” Lexa starts, clears her throat, sighs into the receiver and Clarke smiles wickedly. She can almost picture Lexa blushing with the thought alone, “ _ Wait to do what? _ ”

“Oh, come on, Woods,” Clarke lowers her voice, drops an octave or two, “You know very well what I’m gonna do.” It had started as a joke, simply to get a rise out of Lexa, to tease her into stammering like she’s doing right now. But Clarke finds herself considering letting her hands slip past the waist of her pajamas, closing her eyes and pretending it’s Lexa touching her, “You should at least send me a little incentive.”

Lexa sounds wide awake now, “ _ I wouldn’t even know how to do that. _ ”

“What, you’ve never sent nudes to anyone?” Clarke breathes out, knowing she doesn’t have to, knowing she’s being almost mean to Lexa, but it’s almost as much fun as the phone sex would have been. Almost.

“ _ No! _ ” Lexa yelps, “ _ Have you? _ ”

“Thousands of times!” Clarke says and realizes a moment later that it probably doesn’t make her look too good, “I live in constant fear they’ll leak and I’ll be in the middle of yet another scandal.”

“ _ Oh my god, Clarke,” _ she can barely hear how surprised Lexa sounds as she sits up in bed and scoots up closer to the nightstand lamp for better lighting.

It takes her half a moment to swipe to the camera and snap a picture of herself - it’s a far cry from an actual nude picture, but she needs to work up to that if she doesn’t want to give her girlfriend a stroke. She tugs at her loose pajama top until her cleavage is showing so much she’s a deep breath away from a nip slip and looks at the camera with her best bedroom eyes, reaching for her half open lips with her free hand.

She sends it to Lexa with the caption,  _ two weeks _ .

Because in two weeks she’ll be done with her pre-new-album-release Europe tour and back in Los Angeles. In two weeks, she’ll meet Lexa at the airport and kiss her senseless without a care in the world. Two weeks. Two weeks until she can show it all to her in person, until she can melt into her girlfriend and never let go.

Well, she does have five photoshoots booked almost back to back and a few interviews, but  _ details _ .

“Look at the picture I sent you,” Clarke says after a solid minute in silence, and she half hears Lexa thumbing at her phone to get to the messaging app, opening the picture, gasping and grunting at the same time. Clarke can’t help but grin.

“ _ Okay, you’re just being mean now _ ,” Lexa whines and Clarke imagines her pouting, wonders if her heart is hammering as much as hers is, if her hands are aching to touch Clarke as well.

Clarke hums on the receiver and shuffles back under her blankets, adjusting her phone on her ear so she can curl her hands under her pillows. They’ve made it through over a month, they can make it through two weeks - two weeks that seem to stretch ahead of them without end, “Two weeks and you’re all mine, babe.”

“ _ I’m already all yours. _ ”

Her answer, uttered so fast and with so much certainty, takes Clarke’s breath away - Lexa can sweep her off her feet with a handful of words when Clarke least expects it. 

“I love you,” Clarke whispers before she realizes what she’s saying, what her words mean - because she does love Lexa, there’s not a doubt in her about that.

“ _ It’s the first time you say that to me, _ ” Lexa says after a moment and Clarke forces herself to let out a weak  _ ‘yeah _ ’ past the lump in her throat. She’s not taking it back, because it’s the truth, because she wants Lexa to know, because Lexa is the one who taught her to love again. But she can’t help her relieved sigh when Lexa answers, “ _ I love you too. _ ”

They fall asleep listening to each other murmuring about their day and Clarke can’t  _ wait _ until she can do the exact same thing but with their legs tangled and their breaths mingling. 

Clarke sleeps her day away, her body refusing to wake up before two in the afternoon, either trying to recover from the amount of energy drinks she had in the last few days or getting ready to not have any decent rest for the next week. Stretching her sleepiness away, Clarke grunts and feels her phone falling from her face where it had stuck to after she fell asleep listening to Lexa’s light snoring.

The light from the screen almost blinds her, but Clarke swipes to the messaging app when she sees that Lexa has sent her a picture three hours ago -  _ before _ five in the morning back in Colorado, what an early bird. 

It’s a selfie, something Lexa has only started to send a couple weeks ago. She had just gotten out of the shower, Clarke could tell that much by the water droplets on her naked shoulder, and Lexa has sent more of her bathroom tiles than her face, but the caption is what gets Clarke’s heart racing.

“ _ A week and six days _ ”

  
  



	15. Chapter 15

**PART FIFTEEN**

Lexa watches the baggage carousel going round and round as she waits for her suitcase to come, her foot tapping wildly against the polished floor, her eyes scanning each luggage, set hoping it’s hers.

She’s impatient.

Two months without seeing your girlfriend - her stomach flutters when she  _ thinks _ the word - shouldn’t be the end of the world when said girlfriend is a famous singer who has fully booked concerts for the next year. And it’s  _ not  _ the end of the world. Lexa tells herself that it’s not even that long at all, all things considered.

But two weeks is a  _ long _ time to wait to kiss someone after they say they love you.

Her phone buzzes on her back pocket and Lexa fishes it out, glancing at the message on the notification screen: “ _ I’m in the waiting area. Look for the hottest blonde there. _ ” She rolls her eyes and taps to open their conversation thread, staring at the latest picture Clarke sent her - a selfie of her with her hair pulled back into a fluffy headband, her bright blue eyes bare of any makeup, her mouth open wide in a gleeful expression with the caption, “ _ today, babe!”  _ all in uppercase.

They’ve been sending pictures back and forth everyday for the part two weeks, their captions a countdown until the day they can finally see each other. And that day has finally,  _ finally  _ come.

Clarke is only a few rooms from her instead of a few thousand miles, and it feels almost surreal. 

Right when Lexa starts considering just leaving her luggage there and running to Clarke - because waiting a few more minutes when she hasn’t seen her girlfriend in so long feels like torture -, her suitcase shows up on the belt. She hurries to pick it up and she might have knocked someone to the ground, but she doesn’t look back to make sure. Lexa murmurs her  _ excuse me _ and lightly pushes people out of her way until she can make it past the door and then-

Then she sees her.

Clarke is leaning against the far wall, a tall plant that seems to be in every airport in the world half blocking her from the floor to ceiling windows. She looks so  _ breathtaking _ in her Converse sneakers and jeans jacket over cut off tank tops, her sunglasses perched on the top of her head, that Lexa has to force herself to take calm, measured steps towards her instead of letting go of her luggage and running to her, sweeping her off her feet and kissing her senseless.

When Clarke finds her in the middle of the crowd, her eyes light up, but her smile has a sadness to it. Lexa frowns as she makes her way towards Clarke, but she understands why when Clarke shakes her head gently, looking past the greenery and out the windows.

Photographers.

_ Of course _ .

Lexa sighs. She knew it could happen - after the whole running away to a hotel in the middle of nowhere scandal, paparazzis were following Clarke’s every move to make sure they it all on camera on her first slip. 

They had talked about it. In fact, half their conversations that went far into the night had been discussions about what they’d do to avoid the media meddling in their business, how to have some sense of privacy in their relationship, what they should and shouldn’t do in public, how to handle it when they came clear about it -  _ if _ had become a matter of  _ when _ in their first week apart, when they realized they wouldn’t have it any other way. 

That gesture, shaking her head with her eyebrows knitted in worry, had been her way of saying “ _ they’re right there and I want to keep this in between us for a moment longer _ ,” so Lexa stops a respectful three feet apart from Clarke, “Hi.”

“Hi,” Clarke breathes out. They’re close enough that they can hear each other talk in hushed tones, but still too far apart for them to feel each other’s warmth, to start to make up for all the weeks they were kept away from each other.

Lexa stays still, taking Clarke in - it’s unfair how she manages to still look incredible under the fluorescent lights in the airport. “ _ God _ , I want to kiss you,” Lexa murmurs, because it’s the truth. She’s spent far too many days without Clarke beside her, and she’s  _ here _ , she’s within arm’s reach, her face lighting up at the sight of her girlfriend, and her hair is a mess and Lexa would kill to sink her fingers into it, breathe her in, “Can I at least hug you hello?”

Clarke shakes her head ‘ _ no _ ’, her lips pressed together in a tight line, “It’d be enough material for them. I want to keep you all to myself for a little while longer.” Lexa smiles coyly, because her stomach does a somersault with Clarke’s possessiveness and those words are enough to quell her need for her touch for now. “Come on, my car has tinted windows and is parked right outside.”

They start walking towards the same vague direction, keeping a good five feet in between them at all times as they make their way to the parking lot, people easily walking in between them. Lexa itches to step closer and she has to shove her hand in her jacket pocket to keep herself for reaching out and clasping their hands together, damned be all the cameras outside. 

“Are we making out in your car?” Lexa asks, dumbfounded but not completely against the idea. They’re  _ just _ close enough that Lexa doesn’t need to shout to be heard, but it’s still too much.

Clarke lets out a belly laughter, muffling it on the back of her hand. “No, you goofus. We’re going home, closing the curtains and making out,” she says when they’re getting out the airport, a few flashes bursting around them - Lexa almost mistakes them for lighting, but then she hears someone shouting Clarke’s name. “Or, well, we’re getting dinner, then I’m taking you home.”

The sudden invasion of privacy as more paparazzis file beside them, keeping just enough distance not to be within their personal space, confuses Lexa almost as much as Clarke saying she’s taking her  _ home _ . Lexa takes a moment to make her voice work again, “I… I booked a hotel room. I didn’t know if-”

Clarke smirks at her as she clicks her key to unlock the car, leaning in to whisper in her ear, “If you think I’m letting out my sight this week, you have a big storm coming.” 

Waving at the photographers before making her way inside the car, Clarke leaves Lexa to shove her luggage in the backseat and climb in just half a second before she drives off. The sun is just setting, casting them in a golden glow that makes everything softer, everything just a little more dreamlike, and Lexa barely remembers she might have her picture all over the internet in the morning.

Clarke reaches out to take her hand in hers the moment they leave the airport parking lot and Lexa is pretty sure she won’t make it to the first red light. Her entire body tingles with that simple touch, her legs feel like they wouldn’t be able to support her if she were standing, the skin on her arm prickles as she has never felt more alive.

Cushioning their hands on her thigh, Lexa stares quietly at the way their fingers fit together, all noise around them muffled to her ears.

She’s in love, she’s deeply in love with Clarke, with this moment, with this life.

They stop at a pizza place to pick up whatever Clarke had ordered on her way to the airport - it’s easier than having them deliver it to her place, safer than eating out on a restaurant - and Lexa watches her walking in, placing her order, looking back to the car and smiling, wiggling her fingers in a wave.

Something inside Lexa churns, sings to one side to another, rises to her throat. 

On the drive there, Clarke told her that she doesn’t really mind the paparazzis -  _ they’re harmless once you learn how to deal with them, even friendly more often than not _ \- or the media knowing about them -  _ there’s a good deal of  _ _ speculation already, because apparently I  _ look _ too happy. _ Lexa knows she said most of it to calm her down after the impromptu photoshoot at the airport, but the point is, Clarke isn’t against coming out and saying outright that they’re together, that they’re happy, that the past is in the past and the present is so much better.

She wants to give Lexa some privacy, some time to adjust to the idea of having cameras shoved in her face every time she steps foot in Los Angeles. And Lexa loves her for that.

But if braving all of that means that Lexa gets to hold her girlfriend’s hand in public, she’s more than happy to put up with whatever comes.

As Clarke leaves the restaurant with a pizza box in her hands and a spring in her step, Lexa climbs out of the car. She leans against the door and watches Clarke peak under the lid before meeting her eyes and mouthing a “ _ yummy _ ”, wrinkling her nose at her. Lexa smiles at her dork girlfriend, who makes her so unbelievably happy that she doesn’t care about anyone else, anything else, and half considers closing the distance between them, throwing that pizza to the ground and kissing her right there in the middle of the parking lot.

But Lexa knows Clarke would be more pissed about wasting food than thrilled about the kiss. Instead, Lexa waits for her to get closer and puts a hand on her waist, a tentative touch that says “ _ wait here a little longer _ ” before she takes the box from her and places it carefully on the front seat. Then she turns around. And Clarke is looking at her with confusion in her eyes and a smile that hasn’t left her lips ever since her plane landed.

Lexa knows she’s  _ doomed _ . And she couldn’t be more okay with it.

She tugs at Clarke’s waist until takes the hint and steps closer, their thighs pressed together, their breaths mingling. Lexa cups her cheek, searching her face for any sign that she should stop, but Clarke clings to her waist, pulls her closer, watches her mouth- 

Their lips meet halfway and it’s a soft kiss, a simple brushing of their lips that still hold the shadow of their smiles. It’d make for an awkward kiss, if not for their want, their missing each other, how they pour all those weeks apart into this one kiss.

When Clarke sighs against her skin and presses her body closer against hers, Lexa knows she has never loved someone like this.

They break the kiss when it gets too hard to breathe and Clarke gasps against her lips, “Lex-”

Lexa presses her lips against Clarke’s once more, hides her head in the curve where her neck meets her shoulder - she breathes in, letting Clarke’s warmth fill her lungs, calm her down. Then she forces herself to lean back, her hands still wrapped around Clarke’s waist as she adjust her legs so Clarke is snug in between them, “ I didn’t see anyone lurking. And I couldn’t not kiss you for another second, I don’t care about anything else.”

Clarke tilts her head to the side, her gaze mapping Lexa’s face in the soft early evening light, “I can’t believe I get to have you.” She pulls Lexa down for another kiss, her tongue peeking out the moment their lips meet and Lexa has to tug Clarke even closer to make sure they don’t fall as they break the kiss. “Oh, we haven’t kissed in way too long,” Clarke whines and Lexa can’t do much else but nod in agreement. “But okay, let’s go home, get naked and eat all the pizza.”

The wording makes Lexa almost choke with her own tongue as Clarke gives her two light taps on her hip, walking to the driver’s side. It’s not like they haven’t said over and over again that they’d have sex the moment they saw each other - because they had done enough talking in these weeks and while neither minded the wait, their conversations could only get so far before one of them had to pull back.

Shaking her head at the way Clarke says it, Lexa feels her stomach grunting at the idea of burning energy before getting some fuel, “In that order? Because I’m starving.”

“I guess we can eat  _ the pizza  _ first then,” Clarke says it with a wink and the double meaning is cheap, but enough to make Lexa cling to her door as they get in, “But eat  _ fast _ .”

  
  



	16. Chapter 16

**PART SIXTEEN**

All their plans go down the drain the moment they get to Clarke’s apartment.

They had managed to keep it together in the car, running yellow lights - Clarke threatened to run a red light  _ once _ and Lexa almost lost it - and talking about nothing important all the way to her building.

It was different than Clarke had ever experienced, the way their conversations connected seamlessly, without any effort at all. It had always been a struggle to keep a lively conversation after she knew everything she had to know about whoever she’d been dating at the time, but with Lexa it’s like they’ll never run out of things to say.

It’s as if her soul has finally found its equal, roaming free and unbound now.

They’re still pretty decent as Clarke parks her car and holds their pizza as Lexa takes her luggage out. If Clarke’s eyes linger a bit too long on Lexa’s biceps, well,  _ so what _ ? She’s allowed to look, without any shame or restraints. They even manage to make the elevator ride with little more than stolen glances and linked fingers, thumbs hooked together, their palms brushing gently against each other, sending sparks up Clarke’s spine.

But as soon as they haul everything inside and close the door behind them, it feels like the universe will implode if they stay apart.

Clarke barely has time to drop the pizza box on a counter before her hands are searching for Lexa, their lips colliding together in a kiss too long in the making. Because two months is far too much time to spend away from the person that has become her best friend, her safe haven.

_ Safe haven _ .

That’s what Lexa is for Clarke, that’s what she has always been.

When things got out of hand and Clarke had to run away, Bellamy had sent her to a hotel in the middle of nowhere, the last place where anyone would think to look for her. But it had been Lexa that turned it into her very own safe have, Lexa had been the one to make her feel safe for the first time in a long while.

Ever since then, Clarke had turned to Lexa more and more often, had counted on her, had appreciate her company, had felt a fire burning in her stomach, something she didn’t think she’d ever be able to feel again. Ever since then, Clarke had found in Lexa what she’d been looking for all her life.

Lexa has become her home and, together, they’re bigger than anything.

They break the kiss when breathing becomes a chore and Clarke looks at Lexa’s wanting eyes, flushed cheeks and swollen lips, knows she looks the same, can swear her pounding heart skips a beat when Lexa looks at her lips and back at her eyes. Clarke bites her lip to keep herself from tearing up at the way Lexa’s green eyes pierce through hers, gentle and waiting as her hands snake under her shirt in a silent question.

For a while, Clarke thought the answer to that question would be a solid no.

But she finds herself eager to say yes,  _ yes, yes _ .

Taking a step back, Clarke peels her shirt off and tosses her hair all to one side, watching Lexa drop her jaw ever so slightly, blink away her stunned stare, reach out to her in a daze. Clarke presses their lips together in a heated kiss and tries to keep herself together when Lexa lightly runs her nails down the expanse of her back - she fails, miserably so.

Bumping into furniture and laughing into their kisses, they make it to the bedroom, leaving a path of discarded clothes behind them. Clarke sighs with every tender kiss, every gentle touch, every whispered praise she never felt worthy of and can’t help but believe now. Lexa asks permission for everything, kissing away Clarke’s worries, making sure she knows she can back away at any moment, making sure she feels all the love Lexa has to offer her.

Their limbs tangle together as they find their rhythm, still too new to each other to be perfect. Clarke bursts out laughing when Lexa kisses her stomach and her nose tickles her, and Lexa squirms under her touch when Clarke drags her teeth on her inner thigh - they’re bound to find a few bumps down the road, but Clarke wouldn’t have it any other way.

They map each other’s body, their fingertips tracing valleys and mountains, committing it all to memory. Lexa kisses the freckles under her breasts and listens to her heartbeat as Clarke traces her muscles, lowers her hand, makes her gasp. She takes it slow, explore her folds and watches the way Lexa reacts to every touch - like it’s too much or not enough, like it’s all more than she can handle, like she needs more.

Lexa shifts under her touch when Clarke curls her fingers, asks if she can touch her, wraps her hand around Clarke’s when she nods. When Lexa does touch her - slowly at first, a barely there touch as she gauges her reaction, sinking into her when she nods - Clarke learns what being loved feels like.

Their touches are as reverent as they are light hearted, passionate as they are calm - nothing matters but this moment.

When they fall, they do so quietly and wildly all at once, with shivering cores and heavy breathing, with whispered love promises and bodies clinging to each other, with a passion neither had known before - and  _ together _ .

Clarke closes her eyes and sinks against the pillow, smiling softly when Lexa curls up against her and wraps her arms around her middle. They’re both still catching their breath as they slowly tumble down from their high and Clarke is pretty sure she wouldn’t mind staying here forever. 

She turns to look at Lexa, adjusting their positions until she can run her fingers through her dark curls - they’re tangled from their love making, but it only adds to the warmth settling in Clarke’s chest. As she maps Lexa’s face, taking in the heavy lids struggling to stay open and the faint smile that refuse to leave her lips, committing it all to memory, Clarke can’t help but think about how much has changed since they first met. 

Who knew that standoffish hermit who prouded herself in living in the middle of nowhere could be hiding this soft lover underneath it all? 

Because Lexa is  _ soft _ , no matter how much wood she can carry from one end to another of her hotel, no matter the calluses on her palm or the brave façade she puts on whenever Clarke catches her getting emotional over a book. Lexa is soft and she has managed to soften Clarke along the way.

The quiet moment they’re having - Clarke gently untangling her hair, Lexa playing connect the dots with the freckles on her chest - is broken when Lexa’s stomach growls, too loud to go unnoticed. 

“Pizza?” Clarke asks through her laughter, not even bothering to hide her amusement when Lexa hides her face in the crook of her neck and nods, tugging her closer to her body.

It takes Clarke all her willpower to untangle herself from Lexa’s arms and go get their pizza, because she could go for round two without blinking but her girlfriend needs to gather her strength. She doesn’t bother to find her robe or cover her nakedness in any way - Lexa has seen it all, has tasted every inch of her - as she saunters towards the kitchen.

The pizza is almost cold after being forgotten on the counter for the better part of an hour, but when Clarke picks up a slice and takes a bite that’s just a little too big for her to chew, she realizes even she is starved enough to look past it. 

When she walks into the room, she finds Lexa leaning against the headboard, the sheets pulled up to her chest. Clarke smiles at the sight, at how Lexa puts modesty first even after what they shared, and drops the box beside her before climbing on bed.

There’s something to eating pizza with a lover, both still naked in between the sheets, that gets to Clarke - it’s intimate in its simplicity. But Clarke is content to sit on her heels beside Lexa and eat in silence, picking out the olives on her slices and handing them to Lexa. This quietness is nice after relying on words for so long and just being near each other, as comfortable as they are, is enough.

Lexa reaches out to wipe sauce from the corner of Clarke’s mouth and stares at her for a moment too long, a question in her eyes, before focusing on her pizza again. “What?” Clarke asks, almost amused at Lexa’s hesitating.

“What happened with Finn?” Lexa’s voice is soft and quiet, but that name is enough to make Clarke skin crawl. “We didn’t talk for a while there and after we did start talking I never knew when it would be a good time to ask.”

“So you chose the half hour after our first time to bring it up?” Clarke quirks an eyebrow at Lexa, teasing her as she drops her half eaten slice of pizza back in the box and scoots closer, tugging at the sheets until she can slip under them - and it definitely has more to do with feeling Lexa’s warm skin pressed against hers than with trying to cover up.

“Oh- Oh fu- I’m sorry, Clarke,” Lexa stutters and closes her eyes, gripping her slice of pizza hard enough for Clarke to know she’ll have to wash marinara sauce from her sheets in the morning. But Lexa takes a steadying breath in and drops her pizza back in the box as well, cleaning her fingers with a few paper napkins. She turns to Clarke, a solemn expression taking over the softness in her face, “I shouldn't have. It was completely out of place.”

Clarke desperately wants the softness back. “It’s fine, Lex. I’m joking,” Clarke puts her hand over Lexa’s, squeezing it softly to make sure she knows there’s no forbidden subject for them. Sure, Lexa’s timing isn’t the best, but that’s just another slight bump they’ll have to work through. “He’s-” Clarke takes a moment to think through her words, trying to say as much as she needs to in as little words as possible, “There’s a restraining order in place and my lawyers are putting together a lawsuit. And after Raven posted that video, his public image is ruined.”

It was a hard video to watch - the name calling, the aggressiveness, the fire in his eyes. But it’s more than enough proof that Finn really is a danger to her and needs to keep his distance - because apparently pictures of her leaving the hospital with her body all battered and bruised isn’t enough for the media to believe in her. 

She isn’t the first one to go through this and to be labeled as an attention seeker, an insane woman being bitter about her ex-boyfriend who’s such a sweetheart with everyone else. There’s a never ending list of women who suffered in silence because they knew they wouldn’t be heard. There’s a list almost as long of women who came clear about their abuse and got all the backlash when their former partners got praised for the one time they were a decent human being. 

And she knows she won’t be the last - because society still very much sucks, because abusers are still seen as more worthy than whoever they’ve hurt. But people have reached out to her, to support her in this, to let her know she’s not alone, to tell her they’ve found the courage to speak up after she did. She can only hope that some good can come from her story.

Curling up against Lexa and wrapping herself around her middle, Clarke breathes her in - she smells of pinewoods and home, and it calms her like nothing else could. “I’m fine now. He’s far away from me and I’m good,” Clarke says against her skin, because she really is  _ fine _ . “And a few people even started a movement to get him fired from that movie he got a part in.”

She smiles when she thinks about the “Boycott Finn Collins” hashtag that trended on Twitter for five days straight and how it turned into a real petition that got to the producers, who figured it’d be best to recast than to lose so much profit. 

Lexa tugs her closer and presses a kiss to her temple, curling up against her as well, “Your fans?”

“Yeah,” Clarke lifts her face from Lexa’s shoulder, propping her chin on her hand to look at those loving green eyes - the softness is back to them, “They’re pretty incredible.”

“You’re pretty incredible,” Lexa murmurs without missing a beat and their lips meet in a sloppy kiss, all lazy grins that make it all even better. Clarke can’t get over how sappy her girlfriend is, how happy Lexa makes her, how  _ safe _ she feels.

If there’s any bright side to going through the hell Clarke did, it’s that it gave her Lexa. If it hadn’t been for all the fights and glasses flying across the living room, she might have never gotten to meet Lexa, to find comfort in her arms, to have her calling her late at night after a few too many drinks just to tell her how much she loved her because she was scared Clarke would forget it.

All those bumpy roads led her to Lexa, and she’s glad for that.

Lexa breaks their kiss, looks at Clarke, out of breath and with hunger in her blue eyes, and murmurs a “ _ wait _ ” before reaching out to close the pizza and setting it on the floor - because of course Lexa wouldn’t just kick it out of bed in the heat of things. Clarke kicks the sheets to the bottom of the mattress, giving them more freedom to put everything they learned about each other in the last hour in practice.

They meet halfway - Lexa crawling back to bed, Clarke sitting to find her - and their kiss is deeper this time, growing more passionate quicker. Clarke lets herself fall in bed, pulling Lexa down with her, her fingers trailing down the length of her back-

Her phone rings.

It’s so loud and strident that Clarke feels her insides curling as they break their kiss again. When Lexa groans her frustration against her shoulder, Clarke can’t say she doesn’t share the same feeling. She has half a mind to throw the whole phone against a wall, but Lexa climbs out of bed and fishes it from underneath her jeans lying halfway to the living room, tossing it to her gently so she can catch it.

Glancing at the screen to find Bellamy’s lazy grin mocking her, Clarke almost punches it to answer the call. “Bel, I swear, you couldn’t have worse timing,” she barks at him in lieu of a hello, wanting to drop the call already. 

“ _ Open your Twitter feed _ ,” Bellamy says in an urgent voice, not really minding the lack of warmth in her tone. She had made it pretty clear she’d take a break from everything when she came home from tour, so he better have a good excuse and she waits for it, but he just presses on, “ _ I’m serious, Griffin. Open your Twitter _ .”

Clarke groans as she untangles herself from Lexa, who’s using her stomach as a pillow for the time being, and grabs her laptop, turning it on on her way back to bed. She doesn’t really keep any social media apps on her phone, not since some assholes made her cry, and she does miss the constant interaction with her fans, but it’s better this way. 

As she waits for the browser to open, Clarke watches Lexa wrapping herself on the sheets again after bringing the pizza back to bed and snatching her half eaten slice, happily munching on it. Clarke still has her phone pressed to her ear and is typing with the other hand, so she turns to Lexa and opens her mouth, waiting to be fed. Lexa rolls her eyes half heartedly and gives Clarke a bite of her slice, pressing a sneaky kiss to her temple.

“ _ Is Lexa in town? _ ” Bellamy ask from the other side of the receiver and Clarke snaps back to their conversation instead of gazing at her girlfriend’s back - how the hell did she not know Lexa has a tattoo all the way down her spine?

“Yeah, how do you-  _ oh _ ,” Clarke stops mid sentence as she glances at the screen and her blood turns to ice, “Fuck. Seriously? Again?”

Her mentions are filled with the same picture posted over and over again, each tabloid coming up with a more conspicuous headline to go with it and a  _ gazillion _ of fans going wild with theories and key smashes she can never really understand. Clarke clicks on a tweet to open the picture, but she knows what it is before it loads - it’s her and Lexa kissing against her car, with the pizza place as background. 

“ _ They’re not as mean this time, but the gossip mill is running wild with it, _ ” Bellamy tries to comfort her, and the captions truly are more speculative than vile now, but it’s still completely outing a relationship that isn’t necessarily ready for the public eye yet. “ _ Do you want me to do anything about it? It’s a pretty grainy picture, I can dismiss it as someone else. _ ”

It’s a tempting idea. But Lexa looks over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the screen, darting from one tweet to the next, and Clarke realizes this can’t be a decision she makes alone. “No, wait. Can I call you back in a second? I’ll talk to Lexa first.”

Bellamy sighs, clearly annoyed at having to wait to take action, but he relents, “ _ Yeah, sure. But hurry. _ ”

Clarke ends the call and turns to Lexa, finding her leg under the sheets and gripping it to ground herself as well as call her attention, “So.” Lexa peels her bewildered eyes from the screen and Clarke can’t even blame her for that - some fans can go overboard with their theories. “What do you want to do?”

“You’re asking me?” Lexa says in a breaking voice when her gaze focuses on Clarke. It’s overwhelming to take it all at once, to be put in the spotlight like this, “I have no idea how to handle all this, I think Bellamy would be able to-”

“No, not that,” Clarke interrupts her, shutting her laptop closed and cupping Lexa’s cheek. “I mean. Do you want this to go away? Or do you want us to go public with this?” The mere idea makes Clarke’s stomach turn and twist with excitement, but she tries to keep her cool - and barely manages to do so, “I’ve told you, I’m good with both options. So I’ll leave the ball on your court.”

Lexa presses her hand on top of Clarke’s, linking their fingers loosely as she considers what to do. Clarke can almost see the gears turning in her head, weighing pros and cons, trying to make a rational and educated choice. 

Clarke waits, because she knows she can’t rush this.

Leaning her forehead against Lexa’s, Clarke lets herself close her eyes and enjoy having her girlfriend just for herself for a moment. Because if they go public about their relationship, Lexa will be as much theirs as she’s hers. As much as Clarke doesn’t want this to be true, it is. 

She has grown used to it, has learned how to deal with the constant demand for  _ more _ , because she had to. But Lexa can choose  _ not _ to have the paparazzis sneaking into her life, making something as simple as grocery shopping feel like a battle camp, the gossip columns making assumptions about her life and her past and her intentions. Even if it means they don’t get to go on real dates, don’t get to hold hands in public, don’t get to be together outside four walls.

“How would we go about this?” Lexa whispers, her breath hitting Clarke’s lips. For a moment, Clarke tries to gather her bearings, to understand what Lexa’s is saying, but their lips meet in a gentle, chaste kiss before she can, “Do you want to post a picture of us on Instagram or something like that?”

“Hey, that’s actually a pretty good idea,” Clarke croaks out, leaning back to take a look at Lexa, to make sure she’s not just saying it all to please her. But Lexa looks fierce and determined, and that sight sets fire on Clarke’s heart. “So, what are you saying? You want to put us out in the world?”

Kissing Clarke once more, Lexa plucks any and every worry she has right out of her heart, “I don’t see any reason to hide this.”

There’s something so ordinary about cuddling together against the pillows and taking a selfie that makes Clarke’s heart pound almost painfully in her chest. Lexa tucks the sheets in a way that covers they completely and turns to her side, leaning against Clarke, her eyes closed and tangled hair spreading over her pillow. Clarke holds the phone up and tries to make a sleepy face, but ends up with a ear splitting grin when Lexa wraps her arm around her middle.

It’s a modest picture, considering their state of nakedness. And it’s the first real picture they took together, so it’s a sweet memory to hold dear - it doesn’t get more sappy them their first picture immortalizing their first time.

Lexa stays comfortably wrapped around her as Clarke edits the picture - editing is a stretch, she just puts a filter over it that softens the blacks and makes them look like they weren’t about to have sex. It takes Clarke a moment to think about the caption, but her heart does somersaults as she types it, knowing Lexa is reading every word.

_ “I’m happy. I’ve been happy for quite some time now, and it’s all thanks to this girl! Never want to leave her side.” _

She presses “ _ share _ ” and nearly immediately turns her phone off, kicking it under the bed along with her laptop. Bellamy will be pissed that she didn’t call him back and went public with their relationship before letting him know, Octavia and Raven will probably flood her inbox with pervy texts, her Instagram account may or may not blow up from the comments and all the tabloids having a field day.

She doesn’t want to deal with this tonight. She wants to have pizza with her girlfriend and map out her body, wants to commit to memory every sigh and whispered promises. They can deal with the world tomorrow.

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, it has been a good while! Holidays came and went without letting me come up for air. I hope you guys had an incredible holiday season, and an splendid last few weeks of the year if you don't celebrate it. And may 2019 bring all the joy and happiness to everyone! :') 
> 
> Now I'm back with the last four chapters, which should follow the one chapter week rule. And without further ado-

**PART SEVENTEEN**

It takes Lexa a full minute to realize her bath bomb has dissolved completely.

The deep blue is supposed to be relaxing, with its seaweed promising to clear her mind and lavender and lemon oils filling the room, taking her back to handpicking citrus in the orchard. But all it does is remind her of the way Clarke’s eyes look in the early sunlight coming through the drawn shades.

She sighs.

Trying her hardest to keep her mind in the moment, Lexa takes off her robe and hangs it on the hook by the door, ties her hair into a knot and tip toes inside the bathtub, until she’s comfortably soaked, the warm water lulling her into a calm she hasn’t known in a while.

The last few weeks have been… rough.

She doesn’t regret walking up to Clarke in that parking lot and kissing her until they were both breathless. She doesn’t regret the lingering touches and silly pictures that followed the one that got published. She doesn’t regret it, she wouldn’t take any of it back - the quiet mornings in bed, the whispered  _ “I love you” _ , the promises that seemed too big in the approaching dawn.

Clarke makes her feel things she had only read about, had given up ever feeling them. Clarke - just  _ Clarke _ , not Clarke Griffin, the popstar - makes Lexa feel truly alive for the first time in her life.

That’s not the part Lexa hates, the one she wishes she could peel from her skin and forget it ever touched it.

Saying a solid  _ fuck it _ to her plans of not getting her hair wet, Lexa holds her breath and slides down the bathtub, until she’s completely submerged. Her ears pop and her lungs start burning way too soon, but she needs the feeling of water surrounding her, just warm enough for it to feel like she’s floating in nothingness.

Only a moment passes before she’s crushing the surface, gasping slightly for air, reaching for a towel before the salt gets in her eyes. She pats her face dry and settles back down, closing her eyes, letting her arms float around her.

She might go swim on the river when it gets warmer - she needs the quietness of the water to calm her thoughts, her heart, her soul.

The picture of them kissing in the parking lot was just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. Once they posted that selfie of them - in bed, nonetheless, looking very much sated and glowing - got online, paparazzis surrounded them like vultures.

Somehow, they managed to stay in their happy little bubble all of Sunday and a good part of Monday morning. Truthfully, most of it was spent in bed, mapping valleys and curves, committing sighs to memory, holding hands in that way only new lovers knew how. 

But all their peace came crashing down the moment they left for the airport.

For a moment, Lexa thought someone was shooting at them. It took her a few blinks to realize a bunch of photographers had been all but camping outside Clarke’s building - which is a safety issue on itself - waiting for the moment they decided to come out. Clarke rolled down the window and smiled, said hello, but Lexa couldn’t shake out of her haze fast enough for the cameras to capture anything but a grumpy face.

Which would be fine, if those pictures hadn’t been all over the internet a hot minute later. 

Clarke had dropped her off at the airport with a lengthy kiss before speeding off. Something had gone wrong with one of her songs and she’d have to record the track again so they could finish the album, but she didn’t leave until Lexa promised to call her the moment she landed and gave her another kiss that left them both panting.

When she did land, Lexa turned her phone on, only for it to freeze with the amount of notifications that flooded the device. Her Google alert for Clarke was still set up, but the face that showed up wasn’t the one Lexa spent a good hour looking at - it was her own.

They had tracked her every move.

As she scrolled through her notifications, Lexa saw herself kissing Clarke until she had a silly happy smile on her face, dragging her luggage around, buying a water bottle - she could even see the frown she had on when she realized how overpriced it was -, reading a book in the waiting area, getting to the gate. 

And every picture came with a meaner headline.

_ “Clarke Griffin’s new lover doesn’t seem too happy about their relationship.” _

_ “Did Griffin really trade Finn Collins for Grumpy Cat?” _

_ “What’s wrong with Clarke’s girlfriend’s face and what does the popstar see in her?” _

Lexa shut her phone off after reading a couple articles  _ promising  _ their readers that they’d find out all they could about the  _ grumpy new lover _ , and didn’t remember to turn it on again - or call Clarke - until she was ready for bed. 

When Lexa did call, only marginally calmer after a bucket of chamomile tea, Clare was  _ livid _ .

Clarke more yelled than greeted her hello, her voice shaking as she told Lexa she had been worried sick all fucking day and not being able to reach her phone or the hotel’s hadn’t helped at all, because Lexa had  _ promised _ to call - “ _ and you’re supposed to keep a goddamn promise, Lexa” _ . 

The phone lines had been down in the whole town and around it for almost half a week now, but it totally slipped Lexa’s mind as she barked back that she hadn’t been able to keep her food down after seeing her whole life exposed like that, her every movement stripped down like a science experiment.

Between Clarke bursting into tears with how worried she had been and Lexa shutting down completely, refusing to say anything, they ended up having their first real argument.

It didn’t last. They were both still desperately clinging to the honeymoon phase that was slipping through their fingers way too fast. Within half an hour, Lexa had apologized for not calling, and Clarke understood how overwhelming it all could be.

And that had just been their  _ first _ argument. 

All their three hour long phone conversations about how infinite they felt and Skype dates to watch Disney movies together had given way to anxious texting whatever the newest rumor about Lexa was and Twitter stalking her own girlfriend to quell the aching in her chest.

Her  _ girlfriend _ . Fuck- they haven’t even had enough time to discuss that, to talk about what they mean to each other, how they want to present themselves to the world. 

It had been the tabloids who had decided it for them.

Lexa knew what it would entail, to date Clarke. All the time they’d spend away from each other, how much the media would try to get on their business, people constantly questioning Lexa’s intentions, everything that came with being a little nobody dating someone famous. 

_ Logically _ , Lexa knew all that.

But knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to go to bed alone, knowing the woman she loves is halfway across the country and there are thousands of people wanting to learn every single detail there is to know about Lexa.

Sighing, Lexa reaches out to get her phone from a towel she put beside the bathtub. 

That’s another thing that has changed drastically after she met Clarke, after she allowed herself to believe they could be something.

Six months ago, she’s take her bath reading a good book, or maybe with some podcast playing in the background if she felt like she needed to submerge completely in the water. In a day like this, when the world seems heavier than usual, Lexa would light up as many candles as possible and bring some wine along, getting herself just tipsy enough that she didn’t feel silly about sliding backwards and forwards to make waves, smiling at it like a little kid.

Now, the first thing she does is reach for her phone.

Her thumb hovers over the messages app, then the camera - she could snap a picture and send it to Clarke after spending a good fifteen minutes coming up with a flirty caption, it wouldn’t be the first time.

But they’ve got into yet  _ another  _ argument this morning over Lexa flying to Los Angeles to get this story straight with the press. Lexa said plain and clear that she wouldn’t leave the hotel she worked so hard to build from the ground up so they could explain their relationship to people who just wanted to gossip about it. Clarke pushed her to do it, to do this for them, because this could make things better and everyone would settle down after they saw that they were happy together. Then Lexa snapped, yelled back that she wouldn’t play pretend just so it doesn’t affect her album release, and hung up.

Yeah, not her finest moment.

So instead, she opens the Twitter app.

Anya made her an account after the fourth time she had to show her something about Clarke in her own phone, and Lexa has been using it mostly to follow the news, a few  _ wholesome tweets _ accounts and whoever posted a lot of nature pictures. And Clarke.

Before she even realizes it, Lexa finds herself flying to Clarke’s profile, scrolling down her tweets. There’s nothing there. They’re mostly retweets about this interview or that, some news outlet congratulating her on moving up on iTunes charts, whoever runs the MTV Twitter talking about listening to the two songs she released last week on repeat. Every now and then, there’s Clarke quoting a tweet with a  _ LOL _ or an emoji. 

Lexa scrolls up, opens Clarke’s profile picture, taking in the all too serious face covered in a wild pattern of what looks like war paint. It’s a promotional picture for the music video she saw Clarke shooting - when she asked Clarke to go on a date with her, when Clarke kissed her without giving a damn about whoever could see them.

Her chest crumples with guilt and remorse. Because there’s a reason Lexa likes to keep her distance from everyone, there’s a reason she’s so set on her ways - when she doesn’t have a solid grip on her emotions, she gets mean and ugly, and apology doesn’t come easy to her.

As she taps out of the picture, Lexa sees there’s a new tweet from Clarke. She clicks on the little notification and her dinner almost comes back up.

**@clarkegriffin** I'm not that wise so I keep it inside 'cause distance is taxing, I can't relax. So I take a walk, walk outside and I look at the world through my sad eyes _ #newsong #lyricsteaser #stonesandstars _

Reading that fifteen times doesn’t make it feel like any less of a punch to her stomach.  _ ‘Cause distance is taxing _ . Lexa grips her phone tighter, trying to will her hands to stop shaking. Because Clarke might have posted it as a lyrics teaser for her upcoming album, and it  _ might _ not have any hidden meaning behind that tweet.

But Lexa can’t help but think it’s about her - she remembers listening to that same song, all those months ago, half hidden in between bushes, slowly falling in love with Clarke.

Less than a minute goes by before Clarke posts another tweet.

**@clarkegriffin** I was scared to let you know I need you, by my side, said I need you, by my side  _ #onemore #imgonebeforeigetintotrouble #idkhowtousehashtags _

Lexa almost lets her phone drop in the water as she taps out the Twitter app and finds Clarke’s contact. Taking in a deep breath, she taps the button to make the call, knowing very much it’s about twelve hours overdue, praying for her girlfriend to answer it.

It rings twice before Clarke picks up. 

“ _ Hi _ ,” her voice is short and dry, a far cry from her usually warm ‘ _ hey, babe _ ’. But Lexa finds herself glad to hear her voice at all.

“I’m sorry,” Lexa blurts out in lieu of a hello. It’s what she should have said this morning instead of hanging up on her girlfriend like a petty teenager that didn’t get what they wanted. It’s what have been threatening to burst her at the seams, “I shouldn’t have said- I was completely out of line saying… all that.”

“ _ Yeah, you were, _ ” Clarke sighs and Lexa can almost picture her pushing her hair back, like she does when she’s frustrated. “ _ I know this whole situation is a mess, but you don’t get to turn on me like that. _ ”

She’s right. Of course, she’s right. “I know. I never meant to.” The burning in Lexa’s chest gets worse when she remembers what she said and how much it hurt Clarke, how much it looks like she genuinely turned on her. “I just-” She barely has the energy to fight the tears that roll down her cheeks, “Clarke, I don’t know how to handle this.”

“ _ You can learn without- _ ” Clarke stops halfway through her sentence and takes a deep breath, grunts in frustration, but Lexa knows what words should follow.  _ You can learn how to handle with people wanting to know about you without blaming me for every little thing and making me feel like shit in the same way Finn used to. _

“I know. I am really sorry,” Lexa breathes out once more, knowing she’ll say it over and over again until Clarke believes in her. She knows she’ll do anything so she never has to hear the hurt in Clarke’s voice again. “I’ll go to Los Angeles, I’ll smile to the cameras, I’ll do whatever we need to do to ride it out. As long as we’re together. I’ll be there, pushing through it, until we have quiet. It takes as long as it takes.”

Lexa means it. She means every single word.

Anya can run the place just fine for a few months while they’re still in low season, and not much that needs her immediate attention can’t be solved over the phone. She’ll put a goddamn hanger in her mouth if she has to, but the press will get their pictures and leave them the fuck alone.

Clarke takes a moment to answer and Lexa can hear the soft ruffle of sheets - she could be there, she  _ should _ be there. “ _ I’m not sure we’ll ever have quiet. Not here, anyway. _ ” Clarke sighs and Lexa sighs with her, feeling their shared need for said quiet that won’t come easy, “ _ But- don’t come just yet. _ ”

It makes Lexa’s skin crawl with something too similar to fear, “What, why?”

“ _ I’m completely booked for the next two weeks, I wouldn’t- Well, it’d just get messier. _ ” Clarke says, plain and simple, and Lexa swallows thickly - she didn’t realize Clarke’s schedule was so busy, which only proves how much of their talking has been filled with dumb arguments, “ _ But I have a few free days after that. Then we’ll think of something. _ ”

Lexa nods to no one in particular, willing the lump in her throat to go away. She’s quiet for a moment, staring at the bright blue water that is growing lukewarm. “Clarke. Are we-” It stings her throat, but she needs to know. “Are we okay?”

“ _ Yeah. Yeah, we’re okay. _ ” Clarke says and Lexa breathes out, tucking her knees to her chest and splashing water over the edge of the tub - she doesn’t even mind it, because they’re okay. “ _ Are you taking a bath? _ ”

Lexa smiles at Clarke’s incredulous tone - her muscles almost hurt at the movement after being in a frown all day - and says she is.

When Clarke asks for a selfie in a low voice, Lexa can’t help but thank every stone in her path and every star in the sky that she gets to have Clarke all to herself.

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for description of past abuse. Nothing in too much detail, but be careful while reading.
> 
> The song at the end is I Wouldn't Mind, by He Is We.

**PART EIGHTEEN**

Touching the tips of her now much shorter hair and watching her reflection do the same on the brightly lit mirror, Clarke nods when asked if she likes her hairdo - or as much of a hairdo as anyone can do when her hair ends around her jawline.

It’s been only a couple days since she chopped her hair to half its length, so it’ll take a little getting used to. But The Late Show had given her an amazing hairstylist who made it look like she had woken up like that, hair parted to the side and falling in beautiful beach waves.

She misses the pink.

New album often means new look, but she’s had the pink tips since before her first EP came out. It almost feels like saying goodbye to an old friend, like she’s definitely turning a new leaf in her life and there’s no room for anything tying her to who she used to be.

It’s not a bad thing. Who she  _ used to _ be can’t hold a candle to who she’s learning to be - she’s stronger, braver, happier than she’s ever been and her new album shows that, so her face might as well.

Her phone chimes with a new incoming message as Clarke waits for the makeup artist, who had taken a look at her outfit for the night and rushed back out to get a new eyeshadow palette. She picks her phone up for a quick look, expecting it to be some good luck message from Bellamy or someone from the band.

It’s from Lexa.

If her heart flutters at the sight of Lexa’s name - followed by two heart emojis and a flower one, because apparently, she’s  _ that _ kind of girlfriend -, Clarke doesn’t even bother to pretend it’s nerves for the interview she’s doing in a little bit. She’s just really in love with her girlfriend, there’s nothing else to it.

(She  _ should _ be a little more nervous than she is. It’s the first interview she’s doing since everything happened, since she ran away from the hell she had to call life and fell in love with someone meant to walk among flowers and angels)

In the little time she has before she needs to lay still for makeup, Clarke taps the notification and opens the message. It’s a picture of Lexa sitting cross legged on the floor, a bowl of popcorn on her lap and a glass of wine balancing in her fingertips, her back to the TV showing Roan interviewing Robert Pattinson. She’s smiling with her tongue poking through her teeth and Clarke thinks her heart might explode if Lexa gets any cuter. The caption reads, “ _ waiting for you to come on _ .”

Clarke smiles and snaps a picture of her in the mirror, eyes closed and the lovesick smile that still feels new to her, sending it back with a “ _ almost all ready and pretty for you _ ” and setting her phone back down as her makeup artist comes back with three new eyeshadow palettes and asks for her to lean back on the chair.

When Clarke told Lexa she’s the on The Late Show, Lexa had answered with a firm, “ _ Yes, I will be watching it. Absolutely, _ ” and Clarke had snorted at that. Because it’s The  _ Late _ Show, even with the time difference between Colorado and New York, and Lexa struggles to stay awake whenever their calls go past ten - or, well, whenever their calls are quiet and gentle, not when they’re trying to end an argument before they can finally call it a night.

They’ve made a deal, after they spent almost two days in one argument that snowballed into something else entirely. It had started with Clarke getting sick after living off pizza and ranch dressing for almost a month, but somehow they ended up yelling at each other at four in the morning because Clarke didn’t want her mom to meet Lexa - which isn’t true, she called her mom a solid minute after they kissed for the first time, but her mom is in  _ Germany _ .

When they finally settled that particular argument, they promised each other they’d never go to bed angry, upset with each other or with something stuck in their chest.

After that, their fights became a lot shorter.

They’d find a way to end it, either because Clarke couldn’t stand to hear Lexa yawning halfway through a really good argument, or because Lexa knew Clarke had to wake up early in the morning and needed her sleep. In the end, one of them would eventually give in a little and they’d find a middle ground - Clarke agreed to get vitamins and subscribe to a service that would deliver healthy meals to her door, Lexa started looking over their calendars to find a week they could go see Abby in Germany.

And slowly, their stupid little fights became fewer and farther between.

They’re a week and a half completely argument free, and it feels like they’re finally at peace with each other, with their differences. It feels like they could take on the whole world now.

Clarke straightens up when the makeup artist takes the tissues off her collar and looks at her own reflection - her eyes shine a deep blue with the dark eyeshadow and they’re clearly the focus point, the rest of her face looking as natural as possible when you’re going on national TV. 

She thanks the very kind lady who chatted her ears off all through the process and heads backstage where she’ll wait for her turn. Fishing her phone from her pocket as she walks, Clarke finds two messages from Lexa waiting for her - “ _ You’re breathtaking, no matter what you have on _ ,” and, three minutes later, “ _ I do enjoy it better when you have nothing on _ .”

Lexa is an incurable romantic, but Clarke absolutely loves it when she’s flirty - and when she’s flirty  _ first _ instead of going along with Clarke’s flirting, that’s when Lexa brings Clarke to her knees. 

Popping another button from her dress shirt open and snapping a picture that shows a lot more cleavage than she hopes to show on TV, Clarke sends it to Lexa with a simple, “ _ Too bad you’re not here to take it off _ .” She’s pouting in the picture and her eyes are half closed, the blazer of her two-piece suit frames her chest in a delicious way - she knows very well what she’s doing.

Clarke buttons her shirt back up and takes another selfie for her Instagram story. She’s been trying to keep up with her social media lately and even managed to take pictures of her whole evening so far - Bellamy will be proud, he’s been bugging her about it since she came back from her few weeks at the hotel.

She’s just finished publishing it - with a silly caption and everyone dutly tagged - when someone comes get her. The commercial break is almost finished and she’s about to be called by Roan.

She takes a deep breath.

It’s a really  _ late _ talk show, so script goes out the window - especially considering the host is  _ Roan _ . If she were on an afternoon show or even if this aired in a time where kids are still awake, Clarke would get the chance to veto some topics and bring one prop or another to make it more interesting. But here, she only gets to brace herself for whatever is coming.

She’s here to talk about her upcoming album and the whole creation process around it, which could lead them towards a path she’s not fully comfortable. But she does have more than a few anecdotes from her Europe tour that can keep them busy the whole fifteen minutes they have allotted for her, before they go on to the gaming part of the show - Pictionary with Robert Pattinson sounds harmless enough.

There’s a roar from the audience when her name is called and Clarke doesn’t have to fake the happiness spreading through her whole body, the warmth enveloping her - she waves at them, trying to read the occasional sign someone lifts for her, and she almost takes a detour to go greet people. Instead, she takes the hand Roan offers her to help her up the couple steps towards the stage, hugging him hello and exchanging the usual pleasantries before their mics get turned on.

“-so good to see you,” her mic picks up as she seats down the couch, adjusting her jacket and taking in the ovation that goes on for a little longer, “This is a great crowd!”

“We brought them out just for you,” Roan jokes and shuffles through his cards, a sly smile making him look almost devious as Clarke waves back at the audience, waiting for them to quiet down.

Something burns the back of her throat, something very akin to regret - that sharp feeling when you’re doing something you know you’ll regret in the morning, like that sixth shot of cheap tequila or calling someone at four in the morning. It feels like that.

Because Roan and Finn are buddies.

Clarke has been on the show enough times that it almost feels like home, but half those times had been with Finn, and the other half were mostly spent talking about what they’ve done together outside the studio. Roan had been to her apartment quite a few times, she had met his mother at his house - they were  _ that _ kind of buddies. 

And if anyone asked, she’d say that no, she did not choose to come here as her first interview after everything that went down just to prove to herself that she could, that nothing regarding Finn could affect her anymore. But that’s a little south from the truth.

Still, Clarke has some hopes that Roan will keep it civil.

“What have you been up to, girl?” Roan asks in a flirty way, leaning forward on his desk, “Since you’ve been on the show, you and Finn broke up, you fled to the mountains and went completely radio silence.” He pauses for a second, raises his eyebrow from effect, lowers his tone as he finishes his thoughts, “Started playing for the other team.”

Well.

It feels silly now to have thought Roan would be any more merciful than going straight for her jugular.

Clarke is taken aback, to say the least, and has to bite her tongue to keep herself from asking  _ what the fuck, Roan _ ? on live TV. Some people cheering in the audience snaps Clarke out of her daze and she tries to joke the awkwardness away, “You’re on fire tonight, aren’t you?”

“You know it.”

“I guess a lot has changed since I’ve been here. I did take some time to myself, let’s leave it at that,” Clarke answers with a smile that almost hurts - because Roan has a glint in his eyes that makes her doubt she’ll come out of here alive. “I recorded a new album, went on tour, released a music video. It’s been a hectic ten months? Wow, it’s been almost a year since last time I saw you.”

“We’ll talk about your album in a minute, but-” Now, here - this is the moment Clarke starts to regret her decision to ever come on this show again, “What did happen between you and Finn? You guys were my favorite couple. My very own Brangelina.” He says it with a pout and the audience goes wild, with ‘ooohs’ and ‘awwws’. 

He’s a charmer, Clarke will give him that.

“Well, Roan,” Clarke shifts on her sit until she can put one leg under the other, trying to make it look like she’s more comfortable than she is, “Brangelina broke up as well and I don’t see you drilling Jolie on the why.”

“I know, but I feel like we’re… almost  _ family _ ,” his voice drips with sickenly sweetness and Clarke freezes her smile on. His hair is pulled back in a man-bun, his suit and tie pressed to perfection, his rehearsed grin doesn’t feel out of place - but Clarke feels her skin crawl. “I had Finn over last week and he seems  _ devastated _ with your break up.”

Clarke has to physically bite her tongue to keep herself from saying he’s only sorry because he got caught, he’s only this devastated because it’s affecting his career, he only came to the show to try to remedy some of that. And Roan has clearly chosen what side he’s on.

“He’s a big boy, he’ll get over it.” Clarke says with a straight face, praying to anyone listening that Roan moves the fuck on.

Because the tabloids weren’t subtle about why they broke up, they didn’t think twice before exposing everything they knew and a lot of what they came up with themselves, so it’s not like Roan doesn’t have a clue on the why they broke up.

The audience is dead silent. Anyone with internet access, who watches TV or even passes by a news stand knows why they broke up, knows Roan is crossing a line.

“I personally think he’s  _ such _ a good guy,” Roan insists and Clarke tastes bile, “It’s a shame you’re throwing all that away.”

“Well,  _ you  _ date him, then,” Clarke says offhandedly, barely thinking her words through, and laughter roars through the audience. It’s more a relieved laughter than anything else, but she’ll take what she can get.

Roan leans forward a little bit more, like a lion waiting for his prey to make one wrong move, “Are you sure you can’t give him another chance?”

“Let me put it this way,” Clarke starts, mimicking Roan in his position, getting little more than a breath away from him. Something inside her snaps. She feels the words bubbling in her chest, aching to get out, and she’s nothing but powerless against them. “All the pictures I’m sure you saw? Me leaving the hospital barely able to walk because your little buddy used me as a punching bag? They’re all true. I have a five year restraining order against Finn and if I never see him again, it’ll still be too soon. So no, I cannot give him another chance.”

Her whole body vibrates and she leans back, taking in a breath she desperately needs.

The audience laughs and cheers, someone yells “ _ go off, girl _ ” and Roan is stunned silent. Clarke can’t feel her arms or her legs, black spots pepper her vision and her lungs feel like they’re on fire -  _ oh, fuck _ . 

She had a plan.

She would come clean about Finn when she was ready to talk about everything in a calm manner. She would set up an exclusive interview with a magazine that hadn’t put made her up as the bad guy in all this, they would sit down somewhere near the sea with the wind reminding her of quieter times from her childhood, and she would explain her side of the story. They’d do a photoshoot afterwards - something ethereal, among the sand and grass, something that proved to anyone that she had healed - and no one would ever hear the edge on her voice.

Instead, she had chosen the worst possible words and spat them out on live TV.

“Well,” Roan says, tilting his head in what looks like a cordial gesture, but Clarke knows it’s the last thing he means - he won; she lost her cool and he won, “Hear you loud and clear. Let’s talk about your Europe tour.”

Allowing herself to breathe easily seems like a mistake, but Clarke does it nonetheless.

She tries to find the easygoing, upbeat persona she brings out on interviews, even if it sounds flat to her own ears, and talks about going to the Netherlands and the pub she helped close in Spain and meeting Ed Sheeran in England. Clarke even teases about a future collab with him - which  _ is _ happening on his next album, but she leaves it as a question mark.

For a moment, Clarke can almost believe they’re past the awkwardness and ready to close the interview on a high note, but it’s obvious that Roan isn’t giving up easily when he asks about the “mystery person” all her new songs seem to be about.

Clarke can’t help but roll her eyes and chuckle - he’s not even  _ trying _ to be discreet about any of this. She just- she needs to find a way to handle it with grace.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a mystery person, Roan. They’re mostly about my girlfriend,” Clarke quirks her eyebrows and smiles, her first genuine smile since she came on the stage - that’s what Lexa does to her, “I mean, the first ones are mostly about the relationship I left. So-” she looks to the audience, “-everyone has to promise me to listen to my album from start to finish, at least for the first time.”

The audience cheers in agreement, some thumbs going up to make sure she knows that  _ yes, they will do just that _ . Clarke grins at them - these are the people that make it all worth it.

“Your girlfriend. Right. The one you found in the woods you were hiding?” her grin falls from her lips and Clarke has to hold herself back because all she wants to do is punch the smug smile from Roan’s face, “Tell me, is that why she’s always so grumpy?”

“ _ Always grumpy _ ?” Clarke repeats his words back to him, clinging to whatever fucking grace she can possibly have right now, forcing a playful smile back to her lips, “Come on, Roan, you saw her in, what, two pictures. I bet you don’t look all pretty when you’re about to get into a plane either.” The audience laughs and Clarke can almost make out a little blush rising up Roan’s neck, “Besides, she’s not used to having cameras shoved on her face wherever she goes, and you and I both know that takes some getting used to.” Clarke feels herself getting braver, and she leans in to ask Roan in a conspiratorial tone, “Hey, can I curse?”

“It’s The Late Show-  _ of course _ , you can curse,” Roan waves for her to go ahead, tilting back on his seat. Clarke can’t tell if he’s too uncomfortable with this conversation or just waiting for her to dig her own grave.

“Lexa - that’s my girlfriend’s name, by the way - has a gorgeous smile and the kindest heart I’ve ever known. And believe me when I say I won’t let you fucking  _ bastards  _ take it away from her,” her smile is all gone now because she’s serious, she means every word. 

Clarke has seen it happening before, one too many times, and she refuses to let Hollywood touch Lexa and taint her in any way - not Lexa, not  _ her _ Lexa, not the woman who glued her broken pieces back together with gold and a love she’s never known before.

Roan seems taken aback and Clarke might have been a little more aggressive than she meant to, but she’s on a roll now. And she won’t stop until she gets from her chest everything that’s been eating her alive.

“And honestly, I’m just so fucking tired of reading articles saying Lexa is always in a bad mood or that I traded my  _ golden boy _ for the grumpy cat.” The whole studio is still, so silent Clarke could hear a pin drop - but she takes a deep breath, “Finn is nothing, if not an abuser. The proof is out there, but well, he’s a  _ straight white male _ so he could do no wrong.” Her laughter is dry and humorless, and her whole body shakes. “People need to stop coddling him, pretending he’s the victim. He’s not the one who walked out from a toxic relationship with broken ribs. He’s scum and he needs to be called out on it.”

There’s a beat.

Then the audience explodes. The whole studio comes to their feet, clapping and cheering and yelling.

“Okay, everyone! Clarke Griffin’s album is out in three weeks, be sure to check it out.” Roan barely makes himself be heard over the roar filling the set, “We’ll be right back.” He claws her arm, keeping her in place until he hears their mic disconnecting, “I’m sorry, Clarke, I really-”

“You’re not,” she cuts him before he makes it through his apology, “You’re just like him, you’re sorry you got caught because I didn’t keep quiet and play along,” Clarke says with the fakest smile she’s ever had and yanks her arm away from his grip, leaving him alone to go greet a few people in the audience.

Her whole body is buzzing.

After a few pictures where she tries her best to look genuinely happy and a handful of autographs, Clarke excuses herself to her dressing room. She fishes her phone out of her pocket as she walks a little too fast down the hallways and texts Bellamy before he can call her - he’s bound to be furious, smoke-coming-out-of-his-nose-and-ears-like-a-cartoon furious, but she can’t deal with him right now.

_ I know you’re pissed but I don’t regret it, just be glad I didn’t punch him. Roan was fucking unprofessional and I’m never coming back here. I’ll call you later, I need to talk to Lexa _ .

She needs  _ Lexa _ , she needs to hear her voice.

As soon as the door closes behind her, Clarke taps her phone to call Lexa - because she needs to hear her fucking voice so she can calm down enough to go back out there and sing without breaking down, because she needs to explain herself to her girlfriend.

Lexa picks up halfway through the first ring, “ _ Babe _ .”

“I’m sorry,” Clarke breathes out, the words catching in her throat. She bites her lip, fights the tears threatening to fall - she can’t afford to cry now, not when she’s due to come back in less than ten minutes, “I never meant to drag you into this.

She had fought tooth and nail to keep Lexa to herself. She had tried to keep Lexa’s private life  _ private _ , tried to keep her safe from the vultures killing themselves for more information.

“ _ Clarke _ ,” Lexa’s voice is gentle and so  _ fucking _ soft that it takes her aback. Every now and then, Clarke realizes the damage Finn did - for a moment, she expected being yelled at, being called names, being promised a beating. “ _ I’m already all in. _ ”

It feels like a gentle touch, like they’re in bed and Lexa is tucking a curl behind her ear, like they’re in this together. And they  _ are  _ in this together.

“You’re not mad?” Clarke asks before she can convince herself it’s a silly thing to say. Because it is, because she sounds like a child, but she needs to be sure.

“ _ Of course not, that asshole deserved it, _ ” Lexa says and there’s an edge to her voice - it reminds her of smoke, laughter, Finn being punched. “ _ Who does he think he is, drilling you like that? He’s lucky I wasn’t there, I’d have punched him on live TV. _ ” Clarke knows Lexa well enough to know she means it, even if she’d try to restrain herself for about a minute, and lets out a laugh that eases her breathing again, “ _ I’m proud of you for standing up for yourself like that. He had the upper hand but you put him in his place. You should be proud too.” _

“I kinda am,” Clarke agrees, because hearing Lexa saying it makes her believe it too, “I love you.”

“ _ I love you too, _ ” Lexa whispers back, a lump growing in Clarke’s throat - she feels like she could scream with how happy Lexa makes her, how she’ll never get over her saying those words to her, “ _ Uh- are you up after this comedian guy? Because I think he’s almost done. _ ”

It takes Clarke a moment to realize that yes, yes she is up right after said comedian guy. “Oh shit! Call you later.”

Laughter echoes from her phone before she finishes the call.

Clarke half walks, half jogs down the hallway until she finds someone with a clipboard and headset waving at her to keep it down and get back in the studio. Roan has just called the commercials, so they have about a minute and a half to get everything in place - which isn’t hard, since it’s just her, her guitar, a bar stool and a microphone.

She’s just finishing adjusting the height of her mic when the clipboard guy gestures for her that’s she’s on in  _ three, two, one- go _ . “This new song is called  _ I wouldn’t mind _ ,” she introduces the song before focusing on the chords. She’s played it often enough that her fingers move without her having to think about it, pressing all the right places, and she lets herself get lost in her music.

This is where she’s meant to be, this is how she’s meant to  _ feel _ .

“ _ Carefully, we're placed for our destiny. You came and you took this heart, and set it free - I'm torn, I'm torn to be right where you are. _ ”

When she tells people to listen to her album in order at first, she’s hoping they get to see how she climbed her way from below rock bottom to a healthy relationship, to knowing what she deserves and how much she has to give.

“ _ I'm not afraid, anymore, I'm not afraid. Forever is a long time, but I wouldn't mind spending it by your side. _ ”

 


	19. Chapter 19

**PART NINETEEN**

Clarke’s hand is in her thigh and the highway stretches ahead of them for miles and miles on end. All that combined with the mellow country music coming out of the speakers in a barely audible volume, just enough to give them some company, makes Lexa wonder if there’s any better way to spend an evening.

Curled up in bed with the woman she loves might be a close second.

After  _ weeks _ of being at least a timezone away and having more miles than she cared for in between them, Lexa finds herself breathing easy beside Clarke.

Because they’ve made it - they are making it work, despite the ups and downs. They found their place in each other, figured out when to push and when to step away after seventeen fights over the same goddamn matter, learned how to navigate each other’s worlds as seamless as if it were their own.

And now Lexa can finally kiss her girlfriend goodnight and hold her in her arms as they fall asleep together, knowing there’s not much that can get in their way.

Well, she can at least do that for a whole week before Clarke needs to go back to Los Angeles for a few shows that want her after the whole Late Show fiasco and some album signings, then she’s starting her world tour. But Lexa is choosing to focus on the good of it all.

She gets her girlfriend all to herself for a whole week.

As Clarke scoots closer to her in the single seat that stretches across the whole truck, Lexa puts it in fifth gear before draping her arm over Clarke’s shoulder, pulling her closer. It’s a Wednesday night and traffic is close to non existent at well past eight, they can afford to be a little careless.

Lexa drove the hour and a half to the airport shaking like a leaf - she can blame it either on her nerves or on that sixth cup of coffee, it’s a coin toss between the two - and barely made it on time to see Clarke’s plane landing. She had just enough time to grab herself some overpriced water and start a pep talk about how meeting Clarke in an airport wouldn’t immediately turn into another internet scandal when the gates opened and her heart dropped.

Because she hadn’t seen Clarke in way too long and seeing her in yoga pants and oversized shirt, her smile growing with every step she took towards her, was like a balm to Lexa’s soul.

“Babe,” Clarke whispers against her ear, pressing a kiss to the spot where it meets her neck, “Can you pull over real quick?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lexa only just manages to get it out, her voice catching in her throat as she tries to suppress a shiver, and finds a spot where she can pull over safely, “What’s wrong? Do you need to pee?”

It’s the first thing that comes to mind, because Clarke complains all the time about her bladder being the same size of a toddler’s and she hasn’t peed after landing. But by the time Lexa has pulled the parking brake and turned the engine off, Clarke is nowhere near the door. Instead, she presses herself further up against Lexa, the hand on her thigh squeezing gently as Clarke brings her down for a kiss.

Lexa melts into it. They’ve greeted each other with just a quick hug, too afraid of any psycho paparazzi being nearby, and she’s only now realizing how much the fire within her stomach has been building up. Clarke wraps her fingers around her neck as their lips move on their own rhythm, tasting each other, finding the familiarity in it all over again.

“I couldn’t go another hour without this,” Clarke inhales sharply and chuckles as they break apart only enough for her to whisper the words against Lexa’s lips, “I’ve gone too long without your kisses.”

Lexa follows Clarke’s lips with hers, barely hearing a word of what she’s saying, too busy trying to keep her brain from short circuiting when fingers trail a few inches up her thigh. “We couldn’t have kissed in the airport, you know th-” Lexa tries to get out, in a voice as convincing as a seven dollar bill, but Clarke cuts her halfway through, pressing their lips together again.

Because they’re not in the airport anymore. They’re parked in the middle of a deserted road and they can kiss how much it goddamn pleases them.

It sparks something inside Lexa, something warm and dangerously adventurous.

Lexa wraps her arm around Clarke’s waist, pulling her close at the same time she snakes her free hand under her shirt, palming her belly. She’s so focused on warm lips against hers and soft skin under her palm, that Lexa barely has time to brace herself when Clarke grabs the front of her henley shirt and pulls her closer, tumbling them both until they’re almost lying down on the front seat.

Laughter bubbles from both of them when Clarke lets out an “ _ ow _ ” as she hits her head against the window and Lexa’s foot gets stuck under the gas pedal. It takes them a moment to stop giggling against each other and to find a comfortable position - Clarke scoots down and Lexa finds a way to kneel in between her legs, putting most of her weight there are she hovers above Clarke.

Her eyes are pale blue under the full moon light, but Lexa swears she can see the stars reflected in them.

She leans in for another kiss, a proper one this time. She wraps her lips around Clarke’s bottom one, sucks on it gently, prying her mouth open before pressing their lips together, her tongue peaking in between. The way Clarke sighs against her lips, heavy and deeply, makes something cling to Lexa’s throat - it’s just like her to cry after one kiss from her girlfriend, and ugh, maybe Anya has a point when she calls her soft.

Clarke is eager under Lexa, clamping her thighs around her waist and snaking a hand in between them as she tilts her head to deepen the kiss. Lexa can barely manage to hold her own weight on her shaky forearms when Clarke grips her hair into a bun to keep it out of her face and rocks her hips up just enough for a fire to light within her abdomen.

“We should-” Lexa clears her throat, trying to get her voice to come two octaves higher and closer to her regular tone, “We should go back.”

Clarke presses open mouthed kisses to Lexa’s jaw, down her neck and up again, whispering against her ear, “What’s the rush?” 

It takes her a few moments to even process the words, her traitor body focusing only on the fire that soft fingertips light in their wake as they make their way up her shirt, trace her tips, find the lace of her bra. Lexa sucks in a breath, letting her lips drag across Clarke’s jaw to suck on her earlobe, pressing her hips down before she fully realizes what she’s doing.

When Clarke moans softly against her ear, Lexa’s senses click back in place and she springs up, nearly hitting her head on the ceiling as she awkwardly sits back on her heels. A hot flash crawls its way to her neck, leaving pins and needles stuck wherever it flows, and an uncomfortable wetness in between her legs.

But watching Clarke lying on her front seat, blonde hair a halo around her head, bruised lips and heaving chest, is almost enough for Lexa to lean back in.

“There’s a long drive ahead of us,” she manages to get out and if her voice is breaking in the same way her self control is, Lexa decides to ignore it.

Clarke leans on her elbows, which pushes her cleavage forward and only serves to make Lexa feels her resolve weakening. “What, you’ve never done it in a truck before?” her voice is hoarse and at the very least, Lexa can rest easy in knowing she isn’t the only one affected by this. She grips the steering wheel as she shakes her head, her gaze dropping from Clarke’s. “Oh, babe. We have a  _ lot _ of firsts ahead of us.”

Her voice is closer than Lexa thought it’d be and she looks up to see Clarke kneeling in front of her with the softest smile brightening up her face. Their eyes lock for a moment, green on blue like the way the morning sky looks against the forest behind the hotel, and then Clarke nods, takes Lexa’s face in her hands and presses a soft, almost chaste kiss to her lips.

As she watches Clarke righting herself on her seat after squeezing her hand, Lexa can taste the promise in her lips, tingling where Clarke touched her -  _ all in good time, my love _ .

Lexa takes a moment to catch her breath as Clarke fiddles with the radio until she finds a station she likes. By the time they’re back in the highway, twangy country music is filling the air and Clarke is humming along to it, making silly faces to Lexa until she caves in and sings along.

It’s things like this that Lexa could swear only existed in literature, the sappy ones she’d swear she had never read - this silent understanding of each other’s boundaries, the way they seem to flow from a intense moment to a silly one without any awkwardness, how she can feel the companionship between them like a warm blanket.

Less than two slower songs later, Clarke is sound asleep beside Lexa, the hours in a plane after a few weeks where she slept six hours in a good day catching up with her. Her feet are propped up on the dashboard, arms wrapped around her middle as her head half hangs off the low headrest, making her snore lightly, and Lexa doesn’t think she could be more in love with someone.

Lexa drives as carefully as she can, glancing at her sleepy girlfriend every now and then to make sure she hasn’t woken up. Clarke tumbles a lot in her sleep with the awkward position, mumbling senseless things occasionally, turning one way or another, and Lexa has only one thought in her mind - she cannot wait until they can fall asleep together and wake up in each other’s arms.

When pavement gives way to gravel and potholes are impossible to avoid, Clarke lets her head roll too far and wakes up when her head hits the window. The annoyed “ _ ow _ ” she grunts under her breath and the furrowed brows she keeps on as she takes in her surrounding make Lexa’s heart grow and bloom, a smile creeping its way to her face.

“Sorry about that,” Lexa says, really meaning it, as she reaches out for Clarke. She keeps her eyes in the road ahead of her, its sharp turns even unforgiving in the dark, but she breathes easier when Clarke scoots closer to her, rests her head on her shoulder and sighs sleepily when Lexa buries her fingers in her hair, “Are you hungry?”

Clarke scoots closer, tucking her knees under her as she wraps her arms around Lexa’s middle. “Kinda, yeah,” she more mumbles than says it against Lexa’s skin, her breathing becoming dangerously even. Lexa holds onto her so she doesn’t feel the next pothole too badly, but Clarke jerks awake once again, “Why, what are you feeding me?”

Lexa smiles, because she’s been planning this ever since their first date - okay, Anya absolutely  _ does _ have a point when she calls Lexa soft. She presses a kiss on Clarke’s forehead as the truck dips into another pothole, “How does scallops with parmesan risotto sound?”

If the grunting she hears is anything to go by, Lexa is pretty sure she picked the right thing. “It sounds amazing. Is Octavia cooking that just for me?”

Scoffing, Lexa pretends to be offended as Clarke straightens up to look at her. She almost tumbles all the way to the windshield when they hit yet another pothole - Lexa really needs to call someone to fix this. “No, I’m making it,” she tears her eyes from the road just to catch the look of surprise in Clarke’s face, “I promised I’d cook for you when you came over, didn’t I?”

For the night, they forget everything the world thinks they owe to anyone else.

Lexa parks the truck in its usual spot and opens the door for a sleepy Clarke to climb out, stretching her arms well above her head and letting out a grunt from the back of her throat that makes Lexa’s knees weak. She wraps her arms around Clarke’s waist - because she  _ can _ , because there are no prying eyes around to keep her from doing so - and Clarke giggles as she makes them both pause and resume walking with the same foot forward to avoid bumping their hips.

She can’t help thinking how much more carefree  _ this _ Clarke is than the one who made her sign a non-disclosure agreement before even meeting her. She can’t help thinking how much more in love she grows with each passing second.

They meet Anya and Octavia in the front desk - Anya looking slightly  _ too _ gleeful at the sight of them together and Octavia sporting a deep frown at being kicked out of her own kitchen. Clarke hugs everyone hello, but settles against Lexa soon after and they’re off to the kitchen when Lexa tells Anya to “ _ get one of the boys to take Clarke’s luggage to my room _ ”.

The way Clarke smiles against her collarbone is enough for Lexa to ignore all the eyebrow wiggling she gets from Anya.

It feels familiar and painfully  _ domestic _ to cook for her girlfriend - even in a kitchen as big as the hotel’s, even if most things they have in there are industrial sized or bought by the dozen, Lexa can’t help the warmth that floods her, can’t help but be sure that she could do this every night.

Clarke climbs on the counter after Lexa dismisses her help, declaring her the official taster, and they talk.

They talk about where Clarke will do her album signings in the upcoming week and how Bellamy reacted when he got a hold of her after she almost bit Roan’s head off in live TV as Lexa prepares the risotto, being slightly too generous with the parmesan, smiling when Clarke scoops a handful for her to snack on after her stomach growls in anticipation.

Lexa tells her about what’s new at the hotel as she heats the grapeseed oil for the scallops, bringing Clarke up to date with the gossips she got so into in the days she called this hotel a home - she rolls her eyes at Raven’s poor excuses at keeping her distance from Anya and cheers a  _ “finally! _ ” when Lexa announces that they finally went on a date a few weeks ago.

They make plans for the days ahead of them as Lexa finishes sauteing the spinach and plates everything into nice little bowls, drizzling brown butter over the risotto, scallops, and greens, talking about swimming in the waterfall Clarke fell in love with and going into town to get the boxer pup Lexa has been talking about.

Lexa leans in for a quick kiss, wrapping her arms around Clarke’s waist to help her come down the counter, but soon it becomes deeper, more heated, and when Lexa finally forces herself to break apart, she feels Clarke’s legs wrapped around her waist. They have a  _ lot _ of catching up to do.

In between bursts of laughter and sloppy kisses, Lexa picks up their plates and Clarke grabs the wine and utensils, making their way to Lexa’s room. If Anya and Octavia - and now Raven, because making fun of Lexa is a sport for the three of them - whistle and make dirty comments when they walk past the front desk, they both are too involved in their own conversation to pay them any attention.

Watching the way Clarke’s lips wrap around her fork and hearing the noises of approval she makes, Lexa has to admit. Never, not even in her wildest dreams, she’d imagine that eating dinner in bed and getting tipsy on wine while discussing what to name their -  _ their, _ Lexa’s heart skips at the thought - pup before falling asleep wrapped around each other could make her feel this happy.

When Lexa wakes up in the morning, it takes her a moment to realize she’s completely bare, only a thin sheet hiding her from the elements, a warm body pressed against her back to keep her from shivering in the early cold air the mountains bring inside. And yet another moment to realize who that body belongs to.

A smile tugs at the corner of her lips when Clarke shifts in her sleep, her own body very much naked, a huff of air grazing the fine hairs of Lexa’s neck.

They had fallen asleep around ten - Clarke too exhausted from her flight, Lexa pushing it late as it was. But a three hour nap gave them enough energy to kiss for hours on end, map each other body with their lips and fingertips, discover new freckles that appeared in the weeks they spent apart. The sun was stretching across the horizon when they curled up together and and fell into a slumber as lazy as the sunshine making its way through the curtains.

Lexa’s body is too used to the early rising for her to sleep in, even if her muscles ache after the late night workout - her abs and back muscles are throbbing from holding herself up on her elbows for too long, her thighs are sore from things that make her stomach pool with liquid lead and desire all over again. But, for once, she allows herself to be lazy and spend the morning in bed, feeling safer than she ever thought possible.

She’s been lonely for too long.

There’s been a learning curve for Lexa, one she’s still climbing her way up, still slipping down on.

College feels like a lifetime ago, one she spent in a concrete jungle with a girl wrapped in her arms whenever their midterms allowed them, and even back then, she didn’t have any baggage from her teenage years to bring into the relationship. But it was easier back then. The learning curve less painful.

Now, she feels the weight from those years she spent alone heavy on her shoulders, the lack of experience an ever present knot in her stomach.

It’s not that she doesn’t know the basics - she hasn’t forgotten how to kiss someone or when to apologize, even if she’s not the one who screwed up. But Lexa never learned to relax when there’s someone snuggling close to her, never quite knew how control her breathing during a heart to heart conversation that only happens minutes before falling asleep, never understood the delicate hues that make a relationship last.

And it shows. Even in the smallest things, it shows.

It shows in the knot in her shoulders when Clarke holds her from behind, in the way doesn’t know if she’s allowed to initiate anything, in how her lip trembles when she thinks about all the areas she’s lacking, so many she can’t even name them.

In how she can’t bring herself to make out with her girlfriend in her truck, even when they’re in the middle of nowhere.

Lexa holds her breath when Clarke’s hand traces up her belly in a sleepy path - there, another thing she doesn’t know how to handle, how to enjoy without tensing up first. She closes her eyes and focuses on the goosebumps the touch leaves in its awake, but they snap open when a palm wraps around her breast, pressing it in a way that makes her catch her breath for a whole other reason.

“Clarke?” Lexa prompts, her voice almost a notch above a whisper, breaking in a mix of sleep and something yet too gentle, but growing into arousal, “Are you awake?”

“No,” Clarke mumbles against her shoulder blade, her knees coming up to mold her body completely around Lexa’s, her fingertips softly kneading the skin bellow.

Lexa feels the corners of her lips tugging up in a smile, “Then why are you grabbing my breast?”

“Some people sleep walk, some sleep eat. I sleep grab,” Clarke explains in a much serious tone, giving Lexa’s breast another squeeze for good measure, rippling a laughter from her chest, “It’s a sickness, don’t make fun of it.”

Still chuckling with how deliciously silly it all is, Lexa turns around. Well, she does once Clarke lets go of her breast with a gentle pat before letting her palm rest on her stomach. Clarke doesn’t break their embrace, keeping her hand grazing her skin at all times as Lexa moves and adjusts her position until she’s comfortable, they both facing each other. 

That’s yet another thing she wouldn’t know to do. Instead of taking it all at face value and waiting for her significant other to turn and gaze at her, Lexa would coil in on herself, taking her hand away like she’s been burnt, bracing herself for rejection at that simple turn.

There’s a learning curve and it’s fucking steep.

She finds Clarke with her eyes still closed, her lips stretching in a playful smile and she snuggles closer, tucking a blonde strand of hair behind her ear. “You can sleep in,” she says, softly, and feels more than hear Clarke sighing lazily, sleep clinging to her, heavy and warm, “It’s too early for us to be up, after last night.”

Because it might be nearing eight, the hotel in full swing already and usually, Lexa would have ticked off at least a dozen things from her to do list already. But they’ve slept maybe five hours in total, they deserve some extra time in bed.

“Don’t you have places to be?” Clarke asks, in a tone that would suggest she’s okay with Lexa getting up and going about her day while she sleeps her morning away, but the way her fingertips dig into her waist, grounding her close to her, speaks louder.

“The only place I have to be is beside you,” Lexa catches herself saying, her voice dripping with all the love she feels. She’d meant to say something else entirely, but the way Clarke tips her head towards her and pulls her closer tells her this was just the right thing, “I cleared my whole week and left Anya taking care of everything. I’m all yours.”

Clarke hums at that, her eyes fluttering open for a moment before she closes them again, a lazy smile in her lips, “All mine, huh? I like the sound of that.” 

She wraps her arms around her waist and tugs her even closer, their fronts touching, their breaths mingling, and Lexa melts into the moment - it’s too soft, too perfect not to try and commit to memory the way the light hits them, how her heart seems to beat in a different rhythm. They stay like that for a while, Lexa mapping Clarke’s face as she drifts back to sleep, content to run on such little sleep if it means she gets to see how Clarke softens in her embrace. 

It seems that Clarke had been just on the edge of falling asleep when she softly jerks awake, prying her eyes open, blinking a couple times to scare the sleepiness away, “What are our plans then?”

“For now, breakfast, I guess,” Lexa says absentmindedly, without any actual plans besides enjoying her girlfriend’s presence, as she outlines Clarke’s jawline with the pads of her fingers, tracing the length of her neck and down her chest, down the valley between her breasts, the swell of her stomach. It’s a tentative touch, something she’s trying out, but Clarke smirks at her. It takes a moment for Lexa to understand what she means and she dips her head, heat flushing up her neck, “Not  _ that _ , Clarke.”

“Why not?” Clarke purrs, and Lexa feels a now very familiar warmth pooling in her stomach when Clarke snakes her hand down her back, lazily dragging her palm down until she can cup her behind and pulls her closer, tugging at her thigh until Lexa takes the hint and wraps it around her hip, “You said it yourself, we don’t have any plans.”

“We do need breakfast,” Lexa tries to reason with her, because they’ve done a good workout without any fuel and her stomach is ten minutes away from growling loud enough to kill the mood. But she can hardly make her voice sound convincing with the way it trembles the moment Clarke sneaks her thigh in between hers, pressing it against the apex of her legs.

“Do we?” All signs of sleep are gone from her features, leaving behind a fire that lights up her blue eyes. “You know what we should do?” Clarke asks, and if she wants an answer from Lexa, she doesn’t give her much room to think with her thigh sliding forward just a bit, her hand resting comfortably on one of Lexa’s buttcheeks. “We should get food and take it to the waterfall, the one you took me to when I was here. We can enjoy the food, lie down in the grass, soak in the morning sun. And then do it in the water.”

“Oh god, Clarke.  _ What _ ?” Lexa half chokes in her own tongue, the last sentence barely consistent with the whole scene Clarke was picturing. She lets out a snort, like the idea is beyond ridiculous - because it  _ is _ \- but Clarke simply wraps her arms around Lexa’s middle, swinging them and using the momentum to turn them.

Lexa lands gracelessly on top of Clarke with an  _ oof _ , feeling the way laughter vibrates within the chest under hers, “I’m assuming you’ve never done it.”

It takes her a moment to find her ground and push herself up, adjusting her legs until she’s straddling Clarke’s waist, the sheets falling from her body. “In the water? No, I have not,” Lexa manages to sound outraged as Clarke sneaks her palms up her thighs, “What’s wrong with a bed?”

“We can do it in a bed when we’re in LA,” Clarke says like it’s the most logical thing, leaning back against her pillows and pouting - honest to god  _ pouting _ , “I wanna do it in the water.”

Lexa feels her resolve wavering, thoughts of dirt touching them and fishes swimming around floating away as new, more enticing ones come to the front of her mind. She imagines what Clarke’s naked body would look like,  _ feel _ like underwater, their weightlessness bringing them closer together, “ _ In _ the water?”

“Yep,” Clarke nods, making a popping sound in the  _ p _ , a devilish smile tugging at her lips.

She hoists herself up using Lexa’s waist as an anchor, spreading her legs so they can fit in the space in between each other’s legs. It’s an odd position, yet too comfortable to be anything but right. 

Lexa feels more than sees Clarke wrapping her legs around her hips as her own find their home beside Clarke’s waist, too caught up on the way her freckles look in the early sunlight to notice much else. But as Clarke’s hands come to rest on her thighs, adjusting her position until they’re as close as they can be - breasts pressed together, breaths mingling, every inch of them aware of each other’s warmth -, Lexa finds herself overwhelmed with how much she  _ feels _ right then, with such a simple thing as sitting across from the woman she loves.

It’s been a long time since Lexa had any reason to feel anything at all.

She knows it’s cliché. She knows it’s something straight out of bad poetry books, but looking back Lexa realizes how long she spent without feeling much more than the tiredness at the end of a long day or slight annoyance at something not working. 

It’s been  _ years _ and her heart aches with how much effort it takes to push past spiderwebs and rusty hinges to expand enough so it can fit everything Lexa feels.

Lexa leans in, resting her forehead against Clarke’s, enjoying the warmth that comes from her - a mixture from sleep, early sunshine, Clarke herself. “I love you,” she murmurs against her lips, the words tumbling out of her before she thinks about them, as if her own body knows to say it.

Clarke smiles against her lips, breathes her in, tips her head forward until their lips are pressed together. It’s answer enough - they’ve said those words over and over again last night, in lazy whispers and passionate bursts as they came undone. 

There’s something gentle about kissing someone right after they wake up, when they still taste like their dreams and sleep lingers in their skin. Lexa tips forwards and opens her lips against Clarke’s, deepening the kiss as her hands trace the fair skin until she can sink her fingers in tangled, messy curls. 

Clarke is the one who breaks the kiss, breathing in sharply after not being able to do so properly while they were together, and Lexa takes a little pride in it. But the smile it had dragged out from her fades when she sees the way Clarke’s brows are knitted together, her eyes filled with worry that doesn’t belong here.

“I thought about it, about us. And maybe we should-” Clarke pauses, worrying her lip in between her teeth before finding it within herself to go on, “Okay, I know it sounds weird, but we could pretend we’re not together anymore. In the downlow, at least. I mean no pictures, no going places together, nothing like that. Until my tour is over and this whole thing with Finn dies down for good. They’ll forget about me for a while and we then we can-”

“No,” Lexa cuts her mid sentence, having heard more than enough.

Clarke’s eyebrows shoot up, confusion flooding her instead as she draws back a little bit, “ _ No _ ?”

They’ve talked about it, they’ve gone over it again and again, combing through dozen scenarios that inevitably put a stop to their plans on how they’d keep it quiet. They’ve spent whole afternoons arguing over what they’re willing to give up - afternoons that could have spent watching something together, talking about their days or discussing the goddamn weather, anything would have been less stressful.

“No, Clarke,” Lexa says again, her voice softer this time, “I don’t want to live in hiding. I want to take my girlfriend to dates out in the open, and if the media wants to talk about it, let them.” Clarke tilts her head in a silent question as Lexa’s fingertips trace a line that goes from her neck to her shoulder, down her arms and fall to her leg, a smile tugging at her lips as she watches goosebumps rising on the skin, as she imagines her words becoming true, “I want to do silly tourist things with you, I want to go to the movies and have museum dates with you. I want to hold your hand in public. I want it all. As much as I enjoy the quiet moments with just us, I don’t want to hide it.”

“Really? You want all that?” Clarke chokes out, shuffling ever so closer to Lexa, wrapping her arms around her waist until there’s virtually no space in between them, “Even if it makes you uncomfortable?”

“We can avoid social media, I guess,” Lexa whispers, shrugging slightly as she mentions one of the single thing that seems to be in all of their plans, their breaths mingling, “I used to do that anyway. I’m getting better at not letting it get to me and what I don’t know, can’t hurt me. I’ll learn things from you, not the tabloids.” Lexa has taken her alert for  _ all things Clarke _ already, has deleted everything in her phone that didn’t push their relationship forward. “But I want to be with you,  _ all _ of you.”

Maybe it’s the sureness in her voice, maybe it’s the words themselves, but Clarke blinks and tears roll down her cheeks before Lexa can keep them from forming. She kisses them away, assuming they’re not a bad sign, and holds Clarke as a relieved sob rushes past her throat.

“I’m in it for the long haul, Clarke,” Lexa says at last, putting into words everything she’s been trying to show ever since they kissed for the first time.

If they spend the morning in between the sheets, making plans for skinny dipping in the river they had once gotten drunk nearby and throwing suggestions back and forth about what they should name the pup they’re getting later that week, Lexa can’t help but be glad she still has so many  _ firsts _ to share with Clarke.

 


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not mean to take so long to post the last chapter, oh my!! Between moving away to college and holding on to every germ in my new city, it completely slipped my mind. I hope it makes up for the wait.
> 
> Thank you all so much for every kudos, every bookmark, every comment - that I read and hold dear to my heart - and for the support with this story. It's a great journey. See you in the next one! :')

**PART TWENTY**

Los Angeles traffic has always driven Clarke insane.

The mere thought of spending three hours in a stuffy car to get to somewhere that couldn’t possibly be more than twenty minutes away was enough to make her want to quit her job and move to the middle of nowhere, pick up a job she could do from home, in pajamas and her hair in a bun.

(Lately, that  _ middle of nowhere _ had a set address, somewhere in the deep of Colorado where the forest are as green as a certain pair of eyes.)

But tonight, she revels in each and every red light, thanks her stars for whenever traffic keeps her moving maybe two yards in five minutes. Because every disastrous aspect of LA traffic that she loathes with every fiber of her being means another moment close to Lexa in the backseat of a very luxurious limo, sipping expensive champagne and watching each other under the amber city lights.

Clarke treasures every minute she gets beside Lexa - because they’re few and far in between, because the simple act of holding her girlfriend’s hand makes lead pool in her stomach.

Between recording a couple new music videos and touring the whole country for two months straight, Clarke hasn’t had  _ time _ to get another week off to go visit Lexa and lose herself in the nature sounds that filtered in as they read together in the hotel garden. And she missed Lexa, missed her skin pressed against hers in the early morning, the kisses in a poorly lit bar bathroom, spending hours in the water discovering new ways to make each other feel good, whispered conversations that went well into the night.

Phone calls and video chats only do so much when she’s craving Lexa’s warmth lulling her to sleep, her smell bringing her nothing but comfort and rose tinted dreams. 

So, for once, Clarke is glad for Los Angeles traffic and how absurdly long it takes to go anywhere, because she gets to soak Lexa in without sharing her with anyone.

It’d be better to be at home, wearing Lexa’s sweater as her pajama and cooking together with soul music playing low in the background, but getting all dress up to go to the American Music Award show isn’t half bad. And being nominated for three categories after hearing Finn say countless times that she wouldn’t get anywhere without him is the cherry on top.

Clarke peels her eyes from their joined hands in her lap - she’s been playing with their intertwined fingers for a while now, enjoying the feel of their hands together - and looks up at Lexa, who’s gone stiff beside her. “Hey,” Clarke says softly, squeezing her hand a little to get her attention, “You good?”

“Yes,” Lexa answers automatically and Clarke waits, runs her thumb over her knuckles to give Lexa something to focus on. She’s been so used to having to be fine all the time and push past whatever emotion she was feeling to get ahead in life that it takes her a while to admit to herself she’s not feeling so great. Clarke noticed it a while ago, in one of their late night talks, and waiting usually brings Lexa out of her shell. “Yeah, I’m okay. Nervous, but okay.”

Clarke smiles at her, leaning closer, snuggling against her arm. “Kinda wishing you had taken that shot when I did, aren’t you?” 

The teasing brings a smile to Lexa, who rolls her eyes at Clarke before leaning down to press a kiss to the top of her head, “A little bit.”

“You’ll be fine,” Clarke assures her, standing a little straighter so she can look into Lexa’s eyes. She wants to make sure it’s just nerves she’s fighting and not something deeper. “It’s just a few hours, you’ll be fine,” Clarke says again, waiting until Lexa nods at her, “Think about what’s waiting for you at home.”

It earns her a genuine smile, that Clarke answers with one of her own.

She glances towards the driver and meets his eyes in the rearview mirror - his quirked eyebrow tells her enough about what he thinks is waiting for Lexa at home, and she has to fight to keep herself from rolling her eyes. 

It sounds dirty, she knows it. But there’s something better than sex waiting for them both at her apartment - a two month old pitbull wearing a puppy diaper and napping inside Clarke’s shoes. 

After a few months of discussing the logistics of adopting a puppy, going back and forth and back again over how they would even go about it and a small construction job at the hotel, they finally went to a shelter. Lexa had come to Los Angeles a few days earlier so they could go by a few shelters and find a dog that connected with them both, and still have enough time to pick all the toys and things it’d need to be comfortable during the flight back.

They had thought about adopting an older dog, one that was already potty trained and easy around strangers. But then, they found Gustus - a tiny baby who was on his way to the kill shelter simply for being a pitbull, and it was love at first sight. 

It’s been two days and Clarke is already telling whoever will listen that he’s the only man she needs in her life.

But it’s something for only the both of them to share, so neither mention it out loud. “I might be more worried about the red carpet than the actual awards show,” Lexa says, her shoulders relaxing as she lets her defenses down. 

The paparazzis made their life a living hell for a little while and it only served for Lexa to be wary of anyone with a camera, so Clarke squeezes her hand, tucks a curl around her ear, brushes her thumb in the spot under her jaw, “The red carpet lasts twenty minutes, tops. They’ll be all shouting and screaming at anything that moves, but I’m pretty sure we can get you to sneak past them, if that’s what you want.”

Lexa shakes her head, leaning into Clarke’s touch a little, “There’s no need. It’s just-” she sighs heavily, “It’s nerve wracking.”

“You’ll be fine,” Clarke murmurs against her shoulder, pressing a kiss to it and running her fingers down her neck, aching to sink them into the curls that are sadly pinned to the side, “Besides, you should be more worried about the after party.”

Clarke knows she probably  _ shouldn’t _ be so amused at the way Lexa’s eyes widen and her posture becomes stiff again, but laughter bubbles in her chest and she lets out a chuckle when Lexa gasps, “What?  _ Why _ ?”

“I’m teasing, babe,” Clarke explains and intertwine their fingers again, squeezing her hand tight, “I’ll introduce you to everyone and I promise, after a few drinks, even the cockiest celebrities get down from their high horses and just chill. You’ll be doing shots with Ed Sheeran before the end of the night.”

Lexa turns to her, her eyebrows knitted together in confusion, “Who?”

“Ginger guy we listened to on the flight over?” Clarke tries, laughing when the confused look stays firmly in place, “The one you said looked like Ron Weasley?”

“Oh. Okay, yeah. I know him,” Lexa agrees promptly, and Clarke wants to kiss her for being so ridiculously adorable - which she won’t, because they both have a few hundreds dollars worth of makeup on their faces that absolutely cannot be ruined before they make it to the stage.

“We should have made you some flashcards, with names and faces and some cues for you to remember everyone,” Clarke says it in a serious tone and Lexa widens her eyes to her again - it’s too easy to freak her out and she should definitely stop, “I’m kidding. You’ll be fine, Lex. I promise you.”

Lexa leans in and presses their lips together ever so slightly, just enough for both of their pulses to quiet down, “I know.”

It’s a few moments before they stop and the driver gets out, going around the limo to open the door for them. With one last squeeze to Lexa’s hand in an attempt to calm her nerves, Clarke whispers, “Okay, here we go.”

Her dress makes it a bit tricky to get out of the limo in a graceful way, but Clarke manages to do so as she accepts the hand the driver offers her and holds her skirt with her free hand, feeling Lexa adjusting it as she climbs out. It’s bright red and longer than it’s possibly proper for an award show like this, but Clarke fell in love with it the moment Bellamy showed it to her, barely even seeing the rest of the selection she had been sent.

He had made sure to pick some choices for Lexa as well, and even if they were all more modest and in somber colors, they were all beautiful. But Lexa, ever so full of surprises, had chosen to wear something completely different.

Clarke almost snaps the driver’s hand away and holds her own out for Lexa to take as she gets out of the car, with such an elegance that she would help but be a little jealous of. When Lexa links their fingers together, she takes her in - the three piece suit is tailored to fit her like a goddamn glove and Clarke would be lying if she said she isn’t looking forward to having it all in a heap on her bedroom floor.

But first, they have an award show to get through.

Before Clarke can check in on Lexa and make sure she’s okay so far, they’re ushered forward and told to go here or stand there, wait a bit,  _ go, go _ . It’s chaotic, but Clarke has been through enough of these that she can do this with her eyes closed and she makes sure to have Lexa’s hand in hers at all times, no matter who she’s talking to or what she’s about to do.

They get to the actual red carpet part in less than ten minutes, which should be a new record for any event as huge as this. With a squeeze to her hand to quiet both of their nerves, Lexa stays back and Clarke lets go, stepping into the board used as backdrop for all the pictures.

She poses and pouts for the cameras, changing it ever so often according to the photographers requests, and she looks over her shoulder, swings the train of her dress a few times, glares at a few cameras so they can capture the right moment. It’s all supposed to be done in less than two minutes, and Clarke makes sure to answers whatever question she can make out -  _ who are you wearing? are you excited for tonight? look at you, so gorgeous! what are your pre-show rituals? _

But one stands out -  _ where’s your girlfriend, Griffin? _

Clarke melts in a smile and reaches out for Lexa, wiggling her fingers for her to take. She can see the way green eyes widen in panic and, for a moment, Clarke wonders if she’s pushing too far by asking Lexa to join her. It’s selfish and the furthest thing from thoughtful, and Clarke braces herself for rejection.

But, as always,  _ as always _ , Lexa surprises her. She adjusts her warm brown curls over one shoulder and smirks, strutting towards Clarke with one hand in her pants pocket, her free arm wrapping around Clarke’s waist.

Every single photographer starts shouting, and Clarke even hears one of them whistling.

“They love you,” Clarke manages to get out amidst the chaos, looking at Lexa with nothing but awe - she’s so confident and sure in her posing that no one would ever guess that a few minutes ago she was worrying about making it past the photographers.

Lexa meets her gaze, her smirk turning into a sweet smile that Clarke  _ knows _ is reserved just for her. 

Gripping her waist a little bit to keep her close and smiling for the cameras, Clarke can almost see the picture that will be all over the news soon - Lexa looking softly at her, like she’s the only thing she sees in a room filled with people.

They breeze past the reporters, who seem to have questions so interesting that Clarke doesn’t even have to think about her answers. Lexa stays close enough that Clarke can catch her eyes at any moment, but far enough that she won’t get in the spotlight more than she already has - it’s a delicate balance they’re still perfecting, but they’re doing pretty damn good as far as Clarke is concerned.

Once they’re inside and settled into their places, Clarke all but forgets they’re in an award show and that it’d be good for her own image if she got up and mingled with everyone else, if she at least put an effort into it. But she hasn’t seen Lexa in far too long, and the seats remind her of theatre seats just enough for her to pretend they’re waiting for the movie to start and they can stay wrapped into each other until then, talking about nothing but mundane things like where to take Gustus for his first official walk and which restaurant they’re trying out next.

Clarke wouldn’t trade this for the world.

They untangle themselves once the show starts, peeling their attention from each other to the stage. Clarke keeps their hands intertwined all through the opening speech and the first few presentations, letting go only to clap for the winners, falling back together right after, leaning in to tell Lexa something about the winners and who she should know for the after party.

She’s thrilled to have Lexa beside her, still can’t quite believe she is beside her, doesn’t have a doubt that she’ll always be beside her.

Clarke lets herself enjoy the company,  _ really _ enjoy it. For the first time since she started coming to award shows, maybe. Because looking back, Clarke realizes Finn was never supportive, he always made a point to belittle her, every compliment a backhanded one, every comment a little too mean to be considered polite. Now that she has Lexa, she finally realizes what she’s been missing and for how little she’d sold herself.

Now, it doesn't feel so foreign to think that she’s pretty amazing. Before, she lived in a constant battle with herself, fighting every single day to convince herself that she deserved to be where she is, that she  _ belonged _ . Clarke can believe now that she’s pretty fucking amazing, and it’s all Lexa. 

When Shawn Mendes gets up on stage to sing one of his latest songs - something about nothing holding him back from being happy with the one he loves -, Clarke lets herself get lost in the feel of Lexa’s arm around her waist, her thumb brushing over the back of her hand. 

She’ll perform on stage herself in the second half of the show, and she’s singing possibly her most mellow one, definitely not something in the same level as the explosive and upbeat songs that have been performed so far. It’s the same one she sang at Roan’s talk show all those weeks ago, but she’s never believed the lyrics to be true as much as she does now.

Clarke has been torn apart and ripped open, has endured much more than she thought she’d ever had the strength to. She’s sunk low and hard, but what she felt like she was fleeing so she wouldn’t have to deal with the aftermath of it all, Clarke realizes now was simply destiny at work. 

Everything she’s been through allowed her to meet the love of her life, to grow out of pain and into a happiness that threatens to break her chest open as much as it calms her every breath.

When they announce the winner for favorite female artist under the pop/rock category, Clarke presses a kiss to Lexa’s cheek, feeling all her support in the light brush of her fingertips to her arm, seeing how proud she is of her in the way she smiles at her.

She doesn’t have to grab any cue cards. She knows exactly who to be thankful for.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://sassymajesty.tumblr.com), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sassymajesty) and also [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/sassymajesty) now! You're all more than welcome to reach out and send me a message - it can be all yelling, I swear I don't mind as long as you're nice. 
> 
> On Tumblr, you can find sneak peeks for upcoming chapters, as well as other tidbits, like gifsets and oh, spoilers I give in whatever message that gives me room for it! And if you want to know more about my writing and other stories, I put everything together in a page [here](http://sassymajesty.tumblr.com/writing)!


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